Old Home Week
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Munch's new case reunites him with one of his old Homicide partners from Baltimore.
1. Chapter 1

Old Home Week

It was supposed to be a simple job. Munch and Bolander had gotten the arrest warrant, then went to get Kay Howard and Beau Felton. Along the way, John had had a little fun with Stanley, who was still coming off a hangover from the previous night's grand opening of the Waterfront.

"I got a pair of your boxer shorts pinned up over the bar in commemoration of your debut as Stanley the Dancing Bear."

They met up with Howard and Felton, suited up in their white bullet proof vests, and crossed the street to serve the warrant and arrest a pedophile and murderer who had two strikes already and was on his third one. Munch had commented about him being preemo for the death penalty. Kay and Beau had gone on ahead and were already up on the next floor, positioned outside the room numbered 201. Munch and Stan quickly joined them, along with a couple of uniforms close by. They went over to the door and were about to go in when they heard a floorboard creak over their heads. They all turned around, and with her gun drawn, Kay called out, "Police, freeze!"

Then the shooting started, the shooter was using two handguns simultaneously. Several rounds went off before John saw Kay sink back against the wall, moaning as she'd been shot in the chest. Then Beau's leg exploded as another bullet made contact with it and blood was pouring out of his mouth. Stanley fell back and his blood spattered on the wall behind him before he fell on the floor. John tripped over the uniform and Stanley and as he hit the floor along his fallen comrades, he yelled into his radio, "10-13! 10-13!"

John heard his phone ringing, and he woke up.

The room was dark, Munch reached over and turned on the light and immediately regretted being plunged into the brightness. He was hot and breathing heavily; another dream, only it hadn't been a dream, it was a memory. One of the many memories that haunted him throughout the years; and one that made him wonder, had it not been for that shooting, how different would things have been? Maybe he would've stayed on at Homicide instead of transferring out of state and into New York's sex crimes, maybe Beau Felton would've stayed at Homicide and would still be alive, maybe Bolander wouldn't have left, and Kay...oh Kay. Munch remembered too well when the sniper attacks were going on in Baltimore and he remembered grabbing Kay, pushing her into the car and driving out of there like a bat out of hell; he told her if he'd get shot in the head, that would be it, but he wasn't going to let her get shot again.

"Damn you, Gordon Pratt," he said as he put on his glasses and picked up his cell phone, "Munch."

The relief of being awake was short lived as he only got bad news from the caller on the other end.

"What?" he couldn't believe what he'd heard, "How? When?" he got the basic details, "I'll be right over, don't move!" He disconnected the call, threw back the covers and jumped out of bed to get dressed. Why was bad luck always following _him_ around? Why couldn't it go bother some politician?

As Munch got into his clothes, it was then that he thought to find out what time it was. He picked up the clock by the bed and saw that it was 1:20 in the morning. Why, he also thought, did everything bad in the world have to happen at night, preferably right after he had gone to bed? Why couldn't catastrophe work on Daylight Savings time?

* * *

John couldn't remember how he'd even gotten to the hospital, let alone without crashing his car. He had to have been driving like a bat out of hell in order to get there as quickly as he did. He just remembered leaving his apartment and the next thing he knew he was going through the automatic doors at the hospital's entrance and he had his badge out and was immediately talking to the first nurse he saw.

"Detective John Munch, I'm here to see a patient of yours who was brought in tonight, Toni Keller."

"Oh yeah," the nurse replied, "She's in room 201, I'll show you."

"No thank you," he said as he walked right past her, "I'll find it myself, thank you very much."

201? Was that what the nurse had said? He swore, if it turned out to be 210 instead, he was going to kill somebody.

He got in the elevator and went up to the next floor and quickly found the room number. Opening the door, he saw that unfortunately it was the right room. The lights were on and he saw Toni Keller, a young woman barely 21, was sitting in the bed holding an icepack on the side of her head and she was crying.

"Toni," he rushed over to her and saw one improvement over the last times she was hospitalized, she was still wearing her own T-shirt instead of one of the hospital's regulated paper gowns.

She opened her eyes and saw him, and she said in a weak voice, "Hi John…I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called you."

"It's alright," he told her, "You did the right thing calling me, what happened? Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," she answered as she lowered the icepack, "Just a few bangs and bruises this time, nothing serious."

Her hands were still shaking; Munch and his partners from SVU knew Toni well enough to know that she wasn't upset easily, even when she had been in the hospital in previous years with the crap beaten out of her, she had held herself together pretty well, so whatever happened now must've really been serious.

"Where's your father?" he asked her. Usually whenever Toni was a guest for the night in Mercy General, her father, Tony Keller, was right alongside her to make sure nothing happened.

"He's out of town for the week," Toni answered.

"What's he doing?" Munch asked.

"Well we had a discussion a while back and decided we were seeing too much of each other, so he's gone off and for all I know he's shacked up in some two star motel room in Jersey with a cheap floozy he met on the Boardwalk."

"We can hope, right?" he said, trying to lighten the mood, "But what happened to you?"

She seemed to calm down as she answered, "I hate driving, especially at night, but I had to go out, and the streets were pretty empty tonight, so I figured I wouldn't have much to worry about. And then out of nowhere comes this other car, just swerves clear across the road to my side, I swear the driver wasn't even watching what the hell he was doing. I try and swerve out of the way but there was no time, he crashed into me."

"How did you get here?" John asked.

"I don't know," Toni replied, "I guess somebody must've seen the accident and called it in…I don't remember the fire department cutting me out with the Jaws of Life, so it must not have been _that_ bad. I vaguely remember waking up in the ambulance with the paramedics flashing lights into my eyes and asking me a hundred times what my name is, where I live, what state this is...but the car was still totaled and when my father gets back, he is going to kill me."

Munch couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Toni, the accident wasn't your fault."

"That doesn't matter, he still shelled out $17,000 for that car," Toni said.

Munch shook his head, "Toni, he's not going to care about the car, believe me, all that's going to matter to him is that you're alright. You _are_ alright, aren't you?"

"I will be," she replied, "As soon as I can stop shaking. I want to go home, John."

"I'll go talk to the nurse," he told her.

"John, don't tell Elliot about this," Toni said, "You know how much he worries, and that's the last thing I need him coming around here being concerned for my welfare."

"Which is why you called _me_ at one o' clock in the morning, right?" he asked, "I'll be back in a minute."

Munch left the room and found a nurse who had been on duty when Toni came in and he started giving her the third degree.

"When was Toni Keller brought in tonight?" he asked.

"A couple hours ago," she answered, "She got the hell banged out of her in the car crash but in a few days she should be back to normal."

"You're sure there's nothing broken, no internal bleeding or anything like that?" Munch asked.

"The doctors didn't find anything."

"What about the driver of the other car, how is he?" John asked, "Did he live?"

"He's alive, the doctors just finished examining him, he was put in the room next door," the nurse told him, "For the most part, he didn't turn out much worse than she did."

"Can I see him?" Munch asked.

"No, he's sedated right now," the nurse told him, "I will let you know when he's able to receive visitors."

"Is he in there alone?" Munch asked.

"Yes, he was given a private room."

That was all Munch needed to know. He went back to Toni's room and she had fallen asleep in the bed. Munch went over to her and yelled in her ear, "Toni, wake up!"

Toni screamed and jerked up in bed and said, "That's what I hate about hospitals, nobody ever lets you sleep, always some nurse sticking her head in the door at all hours of the night asking if you're asleep yet. I'd like to get a tranquilizer with a six foot needle and put her to sleep for the rest of the month."

Munch tried to talk to her but she cut him off and added, "I hate hospitals, I've been to so many of them now over the years, I spend more time in them than Elizabeth Taylor has."

"Toni," Munch said, "I found out that the guy who hit you is in the room next door."

"Still alive?" Toni asked.

Munch nodded, "And, I'm going to do you a favor."

"What's that?" Toni asked.

Munch pulled back the sheets and said, "The nurse told me that he's only about as injured as you are, so I'm going to look the other way and not see you beating the crap out of him."

Toni started to laugh but it hurt her too much. "What?"

"Look, I know the legal system enough to know if this goes to trial, you are not going to see much retribution, so I'm giving you your chance to even the score now. The law's the law, but tonight the law's going on vacation," Munch told her.

"Be careful, John," Toni told him as she started to sit up, "They said that same thing when they barbecued Freddy Krueger and you saw what happened there."

Munch helped her out of the bed and saw that while Toni still had her shirt on, somebody took her jeans; so he pulled the top sheet off the bed and helped her into a makeshift sarong. Then, Munch went to the door and checked out in the hall to make sure nobody was looking, and he and Toni went into the room next door and John closed the door behind them. The room was dark but they could see the outline of a man laying in the hospital bed.

"Yo bitch!" Toni called out as she headed over to the bed, "It's payback time."

Munch hit the lights so Toni could see who she was beating the hell out of and he went and joined her by the bed. The man in the bed looked to be somewhere between his 30s and 40s, his hair was short and a light reddish blonde with a little brown as well, under the mess of bruises and swollen eyelids was a youthful looking face. The sight of this man meant nothing to Toni where recognition was concerned, but Munch's eyes opened wide in shock and horror at what he saw.

"Oh my God," he said as he took a step back from the bed, "It's Mike Kellerman."

Toni turned to look at Munch and she asked him, "Who?"

"Mike Kellerman, he was my homicide partner back in Baltimore!" Munch said, "What the hell is he doing here?"

The door opened and a woman doctor who was somewhere in her 30s or 40s came in and demanded to know what they were doing in there. John showed her his badge, "I'm Detective Munch, Manhattan SVU, this is Mike Kellerman, he was my partner back in homicide."

"And I'm the patient next door," Toni added, "Mr. Kellerman smashed into me on the turnpike tonight."

The doctor looked at Munch, "You said you're with Special Victims?"

"Yes," he nodded, "Why?"

"Well it'll save me making a phone call," the doctor said, "Can I talk to you outside?"

John followed the doctor out, she closed the door behind them and said to Munch in a low voice, "We just finished running tests on Mr. Kellerman to find out the extent of his injuries and also if he was intoxicated at the time of the crash. Most of his injuries can be attributed to the car crash, but we found something else that can't. When we checked his blood alcohol level, it was 0.04."

"A little impaired but not enough to drive across four lanes and smash into another car," Munch said.

"However," she continued, "We also checked for drugs and found Gamma hydroxybutyrate in his system."

"A date rape drug?" Munch asked, "You mean that Mike was raped?"

Either the doctor hadn't been at this kind of work long or she just never got used to it, she fidgeted as she told Munch, "We found evidence that he's been sodomized recently, we ran a kit but didn't find any hairs, no traces of spermicide either."

"Oh my God," was all he could think to say in response.


	2. Chapter 2

"You mean to tell me that it's not this guy's fault he slammed into me?" Toni asked Munch when he told her what the nurse had relayed to him.

"GHB knocks victims out, renders them unconscious, easy pickings for any sex fiend in their vicinity," Munch told her, "If Mike had that stuff in his system he must've been near unconsciousness already at the time of the crash."

Toni looked at Munch and said, "I don't know much about date rape drugs but that doesn't make sense because he had to have been attacked before he bashed into me…unless whoever attacked him gave him a second dose after raping him, but I've never heard of anyone doing that."

"Neither have I," Munch replied, "That's why it doesn't make any sense."

"So what're you going to do?" Toni asked.

"I don't have a choice," Munch said, "I have to call it in…" he looked at the man lying in the hospital bed and shook his head, "My partner, I can't believe it."

"Baltimore?" Toni said, "What was he doing in New York?"

"Well he's not in homicide anymore, he hasn't been for a while," Munch told her, "He became a private eye, for all I know, maybe he still is."

"Oh, a private dick, eh?" Toni laughed, "That's got to make him some enemies."

"Yeah but I can't think of anyone who would resort to sodomizing him," John replied.

"Exactly why would somebody trade being a cop for a private investigator? They don't solve crimes like in the old movies, they catch cheating spouses. Either way there's blood and a high body count."

"He was thrown out of homicide after the Luther Mahoney shooting," Munch told her, "It's a long story."

Toni hovered over Mike and looked him up and down, then she leaned over to his side and yelled into his ear, "Hey Mike Kellerman, are you in there!"

Mike leaned back and moaned but he never opened his eyes.

"Don't do that," Munch told her, "Look, Toni, you better go back to your own room, I'm going to try and keep you out of this as much as I can."

"Hey wait a minute, John, I didn't do anything to him, you don't need to keep me out of it," Toni said.

"Cragen is going to want to know why I just happened to be in the hospital in the middle of the night," he explained.

"If that's the case, you can't protect me," Toni said, "So call it in."

"What you said earlier…"

"I know what I said, that was when this was just a car crash," Toni said, "This is a rape investigation, call it in."

* * *

Toni had gone back to her room and was just starting to fall asleep when she heard someone outside her door again. Not a nurse, she could tell that much, who then? She heard the door slowly open and heard the mysterious intruder quietly walk in and over to her bed. Without opening her eyes or looking behind her at the person, she said bluntly, "Hello, Fin."

She heard his breath quicken and he took a step back as he said, "Damn you're good, how'd you know it was me?"

"I know you, Fin, I know what your footsteps sound like, I know what your breathing sounds like," Toni answered as she rolled over, "What're you doing here? Don't tell me, John called you down here to keep an eye on me?"

"Pretty much, what the hell is going on around here?"

"Oh it's a long story," she said, trying to brush the whole thing off, "I got into a car crash tonight and the driver of the other car is one of his partners from back in Baltimore…Mike Kellerman he said…guy was raped apparently."

"Damn!"

"Oh it gets better," Toni said as she sat up in the bed, "The reason he slammed into me on the highway was because he'd been slipped a date rape drug, now, I'm still trying to figure that one out, but I'm also trying to figure out what kind of a sick son of a bitch we're dealing with here."

"Where's John now?"

"Still waiting for Mike to wake up," Toni answered with a yawn as she settled back down in bed and closed her eyes, "Some big deal about him back in Baltimore…something to do with the Luther Mahoney shooting, whatever the hell that is." She yawned again and was about asleep when she bolted up in bed and repeated, "Mahoney?"

"What is it?" Fin asked.

"Follow me," Toni ran to the door and burst into the next room and saw Mike was still unconscious in bed and Munch was standing over him.

"What're you doing in here?" Munch asked her as Fin came in behind her.

"I'm going to try this again," Toni stormed over to the bed and once again yelled into Mike's ear, "Hey Mike Kellerman, are you in there!"

This time Mike opened his eyes and tried to jump up in the bed but his body wouldn't let him. He looked up and saw Toni and looked past her and saw Munch standing over him.

"John," he said slowly, still clearly out of it, "What's going on?"

"Mike, do you have any idea where you are?" Munch asked him.

"I…" Mike looked around the room and said, "I'm in a hospital?"

"Do you know why?" Munch asked.

Mike closed his eyes and tried to think. Slowly he seemed to be coming around and was more coherent now. "No, I don't remember, what happened?"

He looked up at Toni again and flinched in response, then he said to John, "How come you never told me you had a daughter?"

"Ha ha," Munch dryly remarked, "Very funny, Mike, I don't have any kids."

"Oh," Mike nodded his head.

"No, allow me to introduce myself," Toni said as she grabbed him to get his attention, "My name is Toni Keller and I'm the person you sideswiped on the highway tonight."

"What?" Mike asked, his head still swimming.

"You don't remember crashing into her?" John asked.

Mike shook his head, "I don't remember anything…" he tried to move and groaned, "What the hell happened to me?"

"That's not going to be so easy to explain," Munch told him, then turned to Toni and gestured for her to get out of there. Fin grabbed Toni and took her back to her own room.

"What's with Munch?" Toni asked, "It's not like Mike's got any military secrets to tell."

"It's going to be hard enough for Mike to find out what happened to him without everybody else around to hear it," Fin told her.

"What's the big deal? We already know what happened to him," she said.

"It's different for guys."

"No it's not, Fin," Toni said, "If I can tell a roomful of strangers and freaks in badges what happened to me, _anybody_ can endure it."

"Except you never told us anything," Fin reminded her.

"I told you guys enough," Toni replied, "Munch doesn't have all the details, only what the doctor told him…somebody attacked Mike, why would he be embarrassed by that? Isn't that what you people at SVU are always telling the victims? 'It wasn't your fault, you didn't bring this on yourself'? If somebody gets the hell beat out of them they don't act so prudent when they go to report it, why is this any different?" she asked him.

"That's different also."

"Not to me it isn't," Toni told him, "Where I'm concerned, rape is only another degree of assault and battery, people don't let their lives be ruined because somebody clocked them, why let it because somebody penetrated them? It's not about sex, it's power, isn't that what you all say? So as long as the victims allow themselves to feel helpless and see themselves _as_ victims, their attackers have the power, move on with your life and they don't have it anymore."

"Not everybody puts things together like you do," Fin told her, "Everybody doesn't _get it_ like you do."

"And that's a good thing?" Toni asked.

* * *

"I was raped?" Mike asked.

"Technically, sodomized," Munch explained, "They ran a kit and weren't able to find any forensic evidence, which isn't going to give us much to go on. Now you T-boned into Toni around 11, where were you before that, do you remember? For that matter, _why_ are you in Manhattan? Do you know that?"

"I was…" Mike tried to think, "I was coming here for a reason…no, I don't remember."

"When did you get into New York?" John asked.

"Uh, let's see…I think that was around 6 tonight."

"Where did you go?"

"I stopped at a diner in Queens for dinner, after that…I can't remember."

"It's alright, take your time," Munch told his former partner, "It's bound to come back to you. Now try to think, Mike, is there anyone who you think would be capable of something like this?"

"Eh…s…" Mike scrambled his brain in trying to think of a name, he almost got a couple out but decided against them at the last second.

"What did you say?" Munch asked.

"I was gonna say…Falsone or maybe Stivers," Mike said, "But that's crazy, I haven't seen them for years."

"Is there anymore bad blood between you guys?" John asked.

"No, just the usual, all these years later, you can be sure Stivers still has a chip on her shoulder for me and the whole…"

Toni came barging in just at that moment and upon seeing Mike was awake and talking and visibly more coherent than he was to begin with, she went over to him and said, "So you're the son of a bitch that blew away Luther Mahoney back in 1997, is that right?"

Mike groaned and said, "I'm never going to hear the end of that, am I?"

"Hey, anybody who knew about Luther Mahoney knew the son of a bitch got exactly what he deserved," Toni said.

Mike looked at her and asked, "How did you know about the case? That was 10 years ago, you would've just been a kid at the time."

"I read the newspapers," she said, "_Everybody_ knew about the Mahoney drug war that killed so many people, and he kept getting away with it until you blew him away…I always wanted to meet you."

Mike laughed painfully and said, "Yeah, I'm such a hero, the drug lord gets 300 people at his funeral and I get thrown out of the squad and accused of being dirty."

"They did that to you?" Toni asked him, "You kill the untouchable drug lord who killed hundreds of people and never spent a night in jail, and they threw you out for that? The freaking mayor should've given you the key to the city for that one, they threw you out? I'd like to find the guy responsible for that and knock his head off."

"Yeah well you'd need a shovel to do that," Munch told her.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because the guy responsible for that was our commanding officer, Al Giardello, and Al Giardello has been dead and buried for the last seven years," Munch explained, "You must've read about that, he was running for mayor and he got shot while making a speech."

"He was going to legalize drugs, and then the gunman came into the operating room and blew away the surgeons who were operating on him at the time," Toni recalled, "He survived that, but died from an aneurism, I remember. Why the hell wasn't he wearing a vest when he made his speech? He was a cop, he knew what happened to people like that, and he gets up on the platform with no protection whatsoever, how stupid was he?"

Toni had her back to Munch so she couldn't see the brief glint of rage in his eyes, but Mike saw it. John restrained himself however and calmly explained to Toni, "It probably wouldn't have done him much good, everybody, Crosetti, Kay Howard, Felton, Bolander, and finally Bayliss, they all put on vests for the job, and they all got shot regardless. Teflon bullets, known commonly as the cop killers, and I'm here to tell you they really are."

"Bayliss," Mike said, and his head was swimming again, "Bayliss…I thought I remembered something about him…"

"It's alright, Mike, just take it easy," Munch told him, "Oh, but do you remember the name of the place where you went to dinner tonight?"

"Uh…no," Mike said in defeat.

"Oh joy," Munch replied, "Well, don't worry, I'll find out."

Toni followed him out of the hospital room and asked John, "How're you going to find out where he went? You think anybody's going to remember seeing him?"

Munch took out his wallet and took out a small picture, Toni realized it was one of Mike from years ago, and he didn't look much different. "You keep a picture of Kellerman in your wallet?"

"I keep a picture of all my partners in my wallet," Munch told her as he took out several more photos, "Incase I ever need to identify their bodies…see? Here's Fin, Olivia, Elliot, Monique, Mike, and that's the Big Man Stanley Bolander, and that's Kay Howard, Megan Russert, and that's…Tim Bayliss."

"I get it," Toni said, "You don't have children so you carry these around to show off to people instead."

"Something like that," Munch told her, "You get back in your own room, I'll be back later."

"Okay but you better take Fin with you," Toni said, "I've no use for him."

"Very funny," Fin replied as he joined them in the hallway.

* * *

It took Munch and Fin three hours and searches of 15 diners, but they finally found one where the staff recognized the picture of Mike Kellerman, but they couldn't help much beyond that; he had come in that night for a burger and a drink and left shortly afterwards. No, they didn't notice if anybody seemed to be following him or paying any attention to him whatsoever, and no, he didn't say anything about where he was going or what his plans for the night were, he didn't ask directions for anywhere.

"Well we got nowhere slow on this one," Fin said as they left the diner and headed back to the car.

"Okay, I need to think," Munch said, "Why was Mike in New York? What was he doing here? I don't think he's ever been to New York, so why come now? He was coming here for a reason, what reason?"

"Maybe he was coming to see you," Fin commented.

"Why, because I'm such a warm and hospitable person?" Munch asked.

"With what we have to go on, you're the only thing in the state with a connection to him," Fin said.

"Alright, so maybe he was coming to see me, but it's been seven years since I last saw him, why would he be coming now?" Munch asked.

"That's what we need Mike to tell us," Fin said, "Did the doctors know if he's going to remember anything anytime soon or not?"

"They said there's no brain damage, other than that they weren't much more help than they usually are, which is not at all," Munch answered.

They got in the car and Munch leaned back against his seat and looked up, "Okay, let's try this again…let's say he _did_ come to New York to see me, was coming to Manhattan, to where I work, to see me…why? Why now? Why any of it? What's going on? Is somebody chasing him? Is there still some remaining member of the Mahoney family who's hunting for him? What? I'm lost on this one. Maybe I should look up some of my other former partners and see if they've heard anything from him."

"Like who?" Fin asked.

"I don't know, Stan's been retired for a long time now, I think he moved to Florida…Kay, I could see where she is…Lewis, no, not Lewis, he won't have anything to do with Mike after the Mahoney incident either…Frank quit homicide and was working at a Catholic school last I heard…Falsone and Stivers…maybe Mike was onto something there…"

* * *

The door to Mike's hospital room came in and Toni appeared once again, yelling in a singsong tone, "Hey Mike, are you asleep?"

Mike's eyes popped open and he groaned and said, "Oh no, I was just lying here wondering why nobody's come through that door for two hours." He turned over and saw her, "What're you doing in here?"

"Hiding," Toni closed the door behind her, "It's about time for Nurse Bedpan to come into my room and do another bed check, so I'm going to screw with her and not be there, then she can tear the whole hospital apart looking for me. Do you mind?"

"Not at all," he said.

"Well you seem to be a bit more lucid than the last time I saw you," Toni said, "The drugs they got you on finally wear out?"

"I think so," Mike said as he sat up in the bed, moving a bit stiffly as he did so, "I'm still trying to get my head around what's happened...you," he pointed at her, "I crashed into you?"

"Bingo, not exactly my idea of a good time," Toni told him as she sat on the bed beside him.

"And Munch came in here and told me that I was…I'd been…"

"I know, I know, penetrated with something," Toni said, "You know he's a sex cop now, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he wasn't a primary on any of my cases but I have had to call on SVU for help a few times over the past few years," Toni said, "And Munch has always helped a lot…he does a good job of letting people think he hates everything, doesn't he?"

"Is he still going on those long rants about everything?" Mike asked.

"Oh yeah," she answered, "You can about set your clock by it. So, Mr. Private Dick, what brings you to New York?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out."

"You know, John told me a little about you, but he never really gets into much from his Baltimore past," Toni said, "I guess it's too much to remember, all his former partners, and who all's dead or moved on…you he never mentioned much, in fact until tonight I had never heard of you at all from him. From arson to homicide to photographing cheating husbands, you've come a long way, but it all seems ass backwards to me."

"Yeah well the paychecks don't," Mike responded.

"That is usually the number one motivator of anything for anybody," Toni said, "But since we're alone and the cat's gone away, why don't you tell me a bit about yourself?"

"Like what?" Mike asked.

"Well, you got a wife worried out of her mind by now with you not coming home all night?" Toni asked.

Mike laughed and shook his head, "No."

"Any kids?"

"Nope."

"Are you seeing anyone?" she asked.

Mike shook his head again and then looked at her, "Why?"

"Just wondering," Toni said, "How old are you?"

Mike laughed nervously and answered, "Too old for you."

Toni stood up beside the bed and told him, "Don't flatter yourself, Mike, I've had and been had by some of the best and a lot of the worst in this city. If I was in any mood to go jumping anyone's bones, I think you'd be my first stop." She reached out and ran a hand across one of his bruised legs and watched him twitch, "You're just the type I'd go after."

"What type's that?" he asked inquisitively, "The trapped and injured type?"

"No," she answered, "There's just something about guys like you that always set me off."

"And exactly what was your case with Special Victims?" Mike asked.

Without missing a beat, Toni answered, "I'm a raging nymphomaniac."

She laughed when she saw the look on Mike's face and she sat down beside him again and admitted, "No…no, I haven't been with anybody in about four years…they handled a few cases for me, but it was more a matter of who I knew instead of what happened…sex didn't have much to do with anything, it was all very simple assault and battery and attempted murder, but I know one of the detectives personally, Elliot Stabler, you'll probably meet him soon, he handled my cases. Nice guy, but he's Catholic."

"What's that got to do with anything?" Mike asked.

"Well he's always feeling guilty about everything," Toni said, "And that's no way to live."

"That doesn't come from being Catholic," Mike said, "It comes from being a detective, for every case you solve…about a dozen more either don't get solved or they get pleaded down to nothing."

"I know, justice isn't pretty," Toni said, "In today's world, justice isn't even allowed to live, they've put it on life support and are squeezing the tubes constantly just to screw with it even more."

"Sound like you've been hanging around Munch for quite a while," Mike noted.

"He's a nice guy," Toni said, "You know he's looking for a new bar to buy."

"Oh no," Mike laughed, "Not again."

"Oh yeah."

The door opened and Munch and Fin came in and both looked somewhat surprised to see Toni there with him.

"What're you doing here?" Munch asked.

"Hiding from that dragon they call a nurse," she answered.

"Well get out of here, I have to talk to Mike alone."

"Why, you become a priest all of a sudden?" she asked.

Fin went over to the bed and pulled Toni to her feet and dragged her out of the room, closing the door behind him.

"Mike, have you managed to remember anything else yet?" John asked.

"I'm trying, John…I'm trying to remember how I got here…and why I was even coming here…"

"You haven't found any surviving Mahoney members have you?" Munch asked.

"No."

"Okay," he sounded relieved at that.

"John, what happened to my car?" Mike asked, "I left my stuff in the car, maybe there's something in it that'll explain why I came here."

"That's a good idea," John said, "I'll go check it out." He headed towards the door and then stopped, and looked back at his former partner, "By the way, Mike, for what it's worth, I always knew you were clean."

"You were the only one," Mike said as he folded his arms behind his head and rested against the pillow again as Munch left the room.


	3. Chapter 3

"Some good idea," Fin said as they looked over the contents from the interior of Mike's smashed up car, "One overnight bag with a change of clothes, the daily paper and his camera…this is a dead end."

"Maybe," Munch replied as he looked at Mike's camera, "Or maybe the little shutterbug got something on film that's worth more than a thousand words."

"What're you going to do, develop it to find out?" Fin asked.

"Might be a good idea," Munch said, "Mike still doesn't seem to be in much condition to get answers from."

"CSU's already been over every inch of this car," Fin said, "Nothing in here that shouldn't be, no prints belonging to anyone except Mike, no blood, nothing."

"And how often does that happen?" Munch asked him as he poked his head in through the open window on the driver's side, "You ever see a car that looks this clean? We still haven't gotten the bloodstains out of our squad car from two years ago, and look at this, there's nothing on the seats, no dirt or gravel on the floor, the floor mats are hardly out of place…it's inhuman for somebody to keep a car looking this new."

"Maybe it is new," Fin said, "Being a private eye makes more money than being a cop does, doesn't it?"

"Last I heard," Munch replied, "I wonder if I…"

"No," Fin shook his head, not even giving John time to finish his thought.

"Thanks for your support," Munch dryly remarked, "Well, I'll get this film developed and see if I can find anything, otherwise this _does_ look like another dead end."

"This whole case is one big dead end," Fin told him, "No witnesses, no crime scene, no complaining victims who even have any recollection of being attacked, and no forensics off the rape kit, this case couldn't possibly get any worse for us."

"Well think about how bad it is for Mike," John said, "He's the one who's actually got to go through it."

* * *

"Your amnesia must be contagious," Toni told Mike when she returned to his room again, "I can't even remember now _why_ I was out on the road last night."

"Oh yeah?" Mike cynically asked, "I find that hard to believe, good looking girl like yourself staying at home on a Saturday night."

"I didn't say I don't go out," Toni said, "I hate driving, especially at night…I don't care what they say, those high beams are nothing compared to the natural daylight, you can see forever on that light, you have a better view of what's coming and going, but at night." She shook her head, "All the drunks and crazies are out on the road especially, and the whole thing becomes a regular game of pedestrian polo."

Mike laughed and said, "We're quite a pair, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Toni said, "I can't figure out what I was doing out there last night…hmmmm, maybe all those years of drinking have finally eaten away my memory." She sat down on the bed beside Mike again and said, "So if Munch does find a new bar to buy, you think he'll ask you to be a partner there?"

"I doubt it," Mike told her, "We never had much to do with each other."

"Yeah but that was when he was here and you were in Baltimore…and incidentally Mike, exactly what the hell is so bloody fascinating about Baltimore anyway? What do they have? A famous junkie poet buried there and the Orioles, so what?"

"I don't know," he replied, "I can't even remember now why I've stayed on there."

"Boy it's a good thing you never worked in intelligence," Toni said, "So what persuaded you to leave the arson squad for homicide?"

"I was offered a job in homicide," Mike answered bluntly.

"That's it?" Toni asked.

Mike laughed tiredly and asked her, "What do you want from me? I'm not a storyteller."

"That's for sure," she replied.

"So what about you?" he asked, "What's your racket, your claim to fame?"

"I'm a writer," she answered.

"Ah, so _you're_ the storyteller," Mike said.

"Hardly," she told him, "I just write for a magazine right now, The Coast to Coast Opinion."

Mike gave a slight nod in understanding. "I wonder what time it is."

"Must be morning," Toni looked around the room, "Don't see any windows, that's quite a claustrophobic inducement…are you claustrophobic?"

"No," Mike shook his head, "You?"

"I don't think so," she said, "Look Mike, I'm not a subtle person so I'm just gonna come out and ask this…how bad does it hurt? I mean when I was younger, I wound up in bed with a lot of people I didn't want to be, but it was just plain sex, not that weird stuff, so for comparison, how do you feel?"

He shrugged and said, "I don't know, the drugs must not have worn off completely because I still feel numb in some places."

"Thank God for small favors," Toni said.

* * *

Another hour passed and Fin and Munch still didn't return. An orderly came by Mike's room and brought him breakfast. None of the food looked particularly appetizing and Toni killed what was left of his appetite by telling him how in hospitals, the kitchens were most commonly put right next to the morgues. Still, they each found enough room in themselves to choke down something from the tray.

"So why were you in arson in the first place?" Toni asked.

"I guess I was just trying to find anything that wasn't like my father," Mike said.

"Why? What did he do?"

"He spent his whole life working in a...glass plant? I can't remember now if that's right," he said, and shook his head, "He worked there all his life, and I have two brothers who are complete screw ups, I tried to make sure I didn't follow in either's path I guess."

"We all try to run away from our pasts," Toni said and shook her head as well, "But where does it get us?"

"What's in yours?" Mike asked.

"A father who was doing life for a triple homicide, he was also a junkie, I spent my teen years whoring myself out to people in the name of survival...and if you want to believe it, the people at Special Victims still say I'm not the most screwed up case they've ever had," Toni explained.

Mike didn't say anything at first but let a sound of understanding out of his throat. Then he added, "So what's life like for you these days?"

"Pretty good actually, my father's out of prison, record expunged or whatever...when he gets back to town I'll have to introduce you to him, I think you'd like him," she said.

Mike laughed unenthusiastically and replied, "I bet."

"Well, it helps to have friends in high places," Toni said, "I know a head shrinker from the FBI named George Huang, you'll probably meet him, he'll probably want to evaluate you later on, he likes to psycho-analyze rape victims for some reason. Then there's Munch, and Fin, and Elliot and Olivia, she's gone right now with my father."

Mike chuckled and commented, "Friends in high places indeed."

"Then there's also Jack McCoy the executive district attorney, he..." Toni shot up in the bed and about fell off of it, "That's what I was doing out there last night! I was going to see Jack, and that's when you crashed into me."

"What were you going to see him for?" Mike asked.

"Oh my God, I don't remember," Toni said as she scrambled her brain, frantically trying to come up with the answer, "I remember it had something to do with one of his cases he's currently working on." She fell back on the bed beside Mike and tried to think of what it was.

The door opened and John and Fin walked in and were momentarily taken aback by the scene of Mike and Toni lying beside each other on the bed.

"Find anything?" Toni asked.

"I don't know yet," Munch said as he came over to the bed and told Mike, "We dumped your car, all we found was a travel bag, your camera with the film still in it, and the daily paper from Baltimore which is about three days old."

He dumped the items on the bed by Mike's feet. Toni got up and picked up the newspaper, "Well let's see what's going on in the 7th circle of hell today." She read over the front page and added, "Hmmmm, very interesting."

"What is it?" Munch asked.

"They're talking about you guys in here," Toni told him, "Your old homicide squad."

"What're they saying?" Fin asked.

" 'It looks extremely rocky for the Baltimore Homicide Unit these days'," she chuckled and mumbled over the next few words, "Some of Baltimore's finest have left us in the past few years, and in a variety of ways. The locals still mourn for Steve Crosetti who took his own life back in December of 1994; as well as Beau Felton, who was killed in his own home after transferring out of Homicide in 1997, also Al 'Gee' Giardello who was, yeah yeah yeah, blah blah blah." Toni skimmed down to another part, "And in recent years, the department has suffered more losses. Detective John Munch," she winked at him, "Transferred out of Homicide and Baltimore entirely back in 1999, who is currently a member of New York's Manhattan Special Victims Unit…others have not fared so well since their departures: Frank Pembleton who left Homicide in 1998 was recently hospitalized for a simultaneous stroke and heart attack, Pembleton was previously hospitalized for his first stroke back in 1996."

She, Mike and Fin heard Munch groan as he shook his head and talked under his breath.

"In other news, one Paul Falsone was suspended from Homicide after his involvement in an alcohol-related hit and run which killed a 22 year old woman."

"When did that happen?"

"In 2005," Toni said, "You really don't keep tabs on the old gang anymore, do you?"

"I was never close to Falsone," Munch said.

"You and me both," Mike laughed painfully.

"Apparently you weren't close to one Laura Ballard either, seems she's been shacked up in the booby hatch for three years after overdosing on painkillers and sleeping pills trying to kill herself," Toni read, "Let's see, also, Stuart Gharty, retired, Meldrick Lewis, transferred out to narcotics, Terri Stivers, on temporary leave, and…" Toni's eyes opened wide and her overall demeanor changed and she looked like she was going to be sick, "Oh shit." She about dropped the newspaper.

"What is it?" Munch turned to her, "What's wrong?"

Toni looked up at him and said, "Tim Bayliss is getting paroled."

"What?" Munch grabbed the paper away from her and looked over the article to see it from himself.

"Who's Tim Bayliss?" Fin asked.

"My old partner," John told him.

Toni glanced over his shoulder and read the paragraph, "Former Homicide Detective Timothy Bayliss is being reviewed by the parole board after serving seven years of a 15 years to life sentence for the 1999 murder of Luke Ryland who made headlines earlier that year as 'The Internet Killer' who brutally murdered two women while broadcasting the acts live on the Internet for millions of viewers to witness. Ryland was released due to a technicality, and was later shot to death by Bayliss who was the arresting officer. Bayliss pled not guilty to one charge of premeditated murder and was found guilty by a jury of eight men and four women in 2000 and has since been incarcerated at Baltimore Prison."

"Wait a minute," Fin said, "They wouldn't lock up the guy who murdered two women but they'll lock up the guy who executed him and did the whole city a public service?"

"That's the justice system for you," Toni said, "Bayliss was originally going to plead guilty but the D.A. Ed Danvers advised him to take his mother into consideration and spare her the guarantee of her only child dying in prison and her dying waiting for him to get out."

Munch looked at her, "How the hell did you know that?"

"I told you, John, I read the papers, I knew what was going on at the time." Toni looked down at the paper, "Seven years out of a minimum 15 year sentence, that tells me that the guys in charge didn't see the execution as that big a miscarriage of justice otherwise he wouldn't have a shot at parole."

"That's it!" Mike said as he sat up in the bed, "That's what I was coming here to tell you, John! I saw that Tim was getting paroled and I thought you ought to know if you didn't already. Because I know he was your partner and that you were closer to him than the others."

"I told him he'd be cursed if he worked with me," Munch told Fin, "I told him, something bad happened to _every_ person I worked with, Kay, Russert, Bolander, Mike, it's me, I'm a curse to everybody I partner with."

"No comment," Fin replied.

"Alright, so we've established why Mike was coming here," Toni said, "To tell you about Bayliss…but why was he attacked then? It sounds like somebody for some reason was trying to make sure he didn't reach you and wasn't able to tell you about it…but why?"

"You think they're connected?" Mike asked.

"Well I don't know," Toni said, "But right now it seems so, you were in Baltimore your whole life and this never happened, _then_ the day you decide to come to New York to see Munch, then this happens, and not just the _day_ he comes to see you, but it takes place _after_ he comes into New York territory, like somebody was already here waiting on him and knew where he'd be coming in…I don't know but they do seem to be connected somehow. I just can't see how though, but they must be. There just has to be a connection to his coming here and the attack."


	4. Chapter 4

"John," Toni followed Munch and Fin out into the hall, "When Bayliss gets out of prison are you going to see him?"

"I don't know," he replied, "I haven't seen him since he went to prison, I don't think he'd appreciate seeing me now."

"If not you, who will?" Toni asked, "Not Pembleton, that's for damn sure."

"What're the odds that there _is_ a connection to all this?" Fin asked Munch.

"I don't know," Munch replied, "But it looks like I'm going to have to do what I always swore I'd die before I ever did again, and go back to Baltimore…the first place I can think to start checking is with my old squad unit."

"What the hell? I'll come too," Toni said.

"Oh no you don't," Munch told her, "You stay here with Mike."

"What am I, his babysitter?" she asked.

"I'd think you'd enjoy that," Fin said.

"Funny," Toni dryly responded, "By the way, Munch, have you guys found a bar to buy yet?"

"I had a couple in mind, but the asking prices are a bit above what Fin and I can pool together," John told her.

"Have you considered asking Olivia to partner with you guys?" she asked.

"No I haven't," he answered.

"Why not?" Toni asked.

"That's a good point," Munch looked to Fin, "I ought to ask her whenever she gets back, she took a few days off and nobody's seen her since…she cashed in her vacation days last week, around the same time your father went off to Jersey."

Toni quickly changed the subject, "So how long will you be in Baltimore?"

"From the sounds of the newspaper, not long I don't think," Munch said, "With Gee gone, and Beau, and Felton suspended and Ballard in Bellevue."

"I don't know her but I feel sorry for anybody who has to eat the food there," Toni commented, "I know it didn't do me any favors when I was there."

"So let's see, I'll have to track down Kay Howard, Terri Stivers, Gharty, maybe see if I can get in touch with Bolander, and Lewis…Shepherd, and of course there's Frank if he can actually talk after this last stroke."

"Talk about your old home week," Toni said.

"More like old hell week," Munch replied.

* * *

"This is a surprise, John," Kay Howard said when he dropped in on her at home that afternoon, "I never would've figured you'd come back here again after Gee died."

"I wouldn't have if I could've helped it," he replied, "The word going around is you finally settled down."

The curly haired redhead in her early 50s snorted and looked down at the ground as she answered, "Yeah, typical nuclear family with a husband, a wife, and 2.5 kids, go figure. So what're you in town for?"

"Mike Kellerman," Munch answered.

"Kellerman?" Kay repeated, "What about him?"

"He came to New York last night, smashed into another car on the road, was rushed to Mercy General."

"Is he alive?"

"He survived, so did the other driver," Munch said, "A little banged up, but upon further examination the doctors found out somebody had sodomized him and he had a knockout drug in his system."

"My God," she said as her eyes widened.

"He was coming to New York to inform me that our old buddy Bayliss is getting paroled…now, the driver of the other car is a friend of mine named Toni Keller, and she thinks his attack is somehow related to his coming to see me, and I happen to think so too, on the grounds of I can't think of any other explanation, and Mike's memory is fogged from the drugs so he can't tell me where he lost the time when he was attacked, let alone by who. Did you know he was coming to see me?"

"Me? No," she shook her head, "Mike and I, we haven't talked in years."

"Have you spoken to anybody who _was_ in contact with him?" John asked.

"Sorry, I wish I could help," she said.

"Can you think of anyone who would want to see this happen to him?" Munch asked.

"Uh, Felton maybe, but he's got his own problems these days," Kay answered, "He got suspended for a hit and run and is currently under investigation, word going round is he might go to jail."

"Yeah, I heard…what about Lewis, or Stivers?"

She shook her head, "Sorry John, we went our own ways a long time ago. What about Shepherd? She used to know him from when he was in arson, didn't she?"

"I'd forgotten about that," he said, "Do you know where she is these days?"

* * *

"Mike?" Rene Shepherd, a tall, thin, black woman somewhere in her 40s with her long hair pulled back in a tight braid, asked when Munch strolled into the homicide precinct to speak to her, "I haven't seen him in months, he never talked to me about coming to see you. Is he going to be alright?"

"There are at least two schools of thought about that," Munch said, "Pertaining to if victims of rape are ever alright again."

Shepherd sat down at her desk and hit her fists against it, "Damn it, why Mike?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out," John told her, "You know anybody who had it in for him?"

Rene nodded, "Lewis, Stivers, and Felton, the whole time they were here, they never told me what the whole deal was with Mahoney, and neither would Mike."

"It's a long, ugly story," Munch said, "But then again, so's homicide, and so's life."

"Amen to that, brother," she dryly remarked.

"It's unlikely if anybody from our old squad was involved that it would've been done directly, do you think Falsone could have made any friends to sic on Mike?" he asked.

"I guess it's possible," she said, "But your best bet would probably be to start with Lewis and Stivers."

"What are they up to these days?" Munch asked.

* * *

"Kellerman?" Meldrick Lewis, a tall and well built black man in a trench coat and bad hat asked as he and Munch cut across the street in the rain, and he laughed without humor, "I ain't seen him in years."

"What was the deal with you guys?" Munch asked, "He saved your life, why'd you throw him to the wolves?"

"Hey man, that was a long time ago," Lewis said.

"Well Mike being attacked was only last night, and if it's somehow connected to our old squad, I want to know," Munch told him, "You know, Meldrick, you're a real son of a bitch. Mahoney was holding a gun to your head, Mike takes him out, saves your life and when the shooting's called into question, you put it all on Mike, when _you_ were the one too stupid to have your gun stolen and held on you by a drug lord in the first place."

"Watch it, Munch," Lewis said with a low growl in his voice as he turned and looked at the man.

"And if my memory serves me correctly, later that year when his nephew Junior Bunk shot up our squad room, injured Ballard and Gharty, and killed three uniforms, it was _your_ gun he stole right out of your unlocked desk drawer and he was handcuffed to a chair!" Munch reminded him, "Are you seeing a pattern here or is it just me?"

"Oh, so this is all on me now?" Lewis asked.

"It's about time it was, you were just as responsible for what happened with Mahoney but you ducked out of it with your tail between your legs and let Mike take the heap but you and Stivers, _he_ got thrown out of homicide while you two got to keep your cozy jobs even though it was your fault the whole mess started anyway. Did you know he was coming to see me? Did you send somebody after him to attack him as payback for something?" Munch asked.

"I washed my hands of him a long time ago," Lewis told John.

"Nice way to thank the guy who saves your life," Munch replied, "Maybe you really wanted Luther to pull that trigger and blow your brains out."

Lewis stopped in his tracks, turned around and got in Munch's face, "You know something, John? You're the son of a bitch, you think everything is a big joke for your own telling."

"I never said I was a nice guy, I never lived under any false pretenses that I was," Munch told him, "But you know what, Lewis? If somebody had saved my life like Mike did, I would've been grateful for it, you avoid him like the plague as soon as Luther's body was cold."

"Suicide by cop wasn't a term in existence when we were working," Meldrick said, "Today if the same situation played out there would be no question about it."

"Luther lowered the gun but was still holding onto it, he was still a threat," Munch said, "We don't just tell people to lower their weapons, we tell them to drop it, he didn't, so there shouldn't have been any problem. But instead of you standing up to Gee and the other big men upstairs and telling them that, you duck out and save your own ass; _but_, also if my memory is serving me correct, you were the one who went out and got the other members of the Mahoney organization to kill each other off, and you also broke his sister's nose which led her to sue the entire department, but when our own bodies start dropping, suddenly that's all Kellerman's fault for executing Luther, you want to explain how that works?"

* * *

"I can't believe this," Terri Stivers, a shorter black woman in her 40s with black curly hair chopped short, laughed as she stood by the side of her car talking to John, "You're still bringing up the past."

"You brought it up first, with Gee," Munch reminded her, "After the Junior Bunk fiasco in our squad room, you couldn't keep your mouth shut."

"People _died_ because of the Mahoney shooting," Terri told him.

"Luther Mahoney died because of the Mahoney shooting," John corrected her, "Meldrick was using informants to start a war between the other members long before they ever hauled Junior in a third time."

"And I blew the whistle on them because it had to stop," Terri said.

"Yeah, but I notice you got to keep your badge and your cozy position in homicide, and so did Lewis, it was only Mike that got thrown out of the unit, why is that?" Munch asked.

"He confessed to shooting Luther."

"He did that after he shot Luther, you told them that it was a dirty shooting."

"It was!"

"No it wasn't. A dangerous drug lord responsible for the deaths of dozens of people is beating the crap out of a detective, steals his gun, holds it on him, and doesn't drop it when ordered to by police, what should Mike have done, let Luther kill Lewis? Would that have made you feel better?"

"The whole thing was a mistake," Terri said, "And that was years ago, times change, people change…"

"If they did, you wouldn't still be mad at Mike for shooting Mahoney," Munch told her, "But you are, and I'm starting to wonder if you're still angry enough that you would hire somebody to attack him."

"You can't be serious!"

"Well that's the thing about my sense of humor, nobody can ever tell," John replied, "The day Mike finds out Tim Bayliss is being paroled, he comes from Maryland to New York to see me, that same day, somebody drugs him and rapes him, and him in his drug-infested state almost kills himself and an innocent woman on the road, and I want to know why, and I want to know who…now, this doesn't reek of a random attack at all, it had to be personal, meaning somebody from Baltimore was after him because nobody knows him in New York."

"And I'm the most likely suspect?" Terri asked.

"You're on the list, you had motive, you wanted Mike to suffer for getting Ballard and Gharty and those three uniforms shot, you had means, cops knows plenty of people they can hire under the table for dirty deeds, and as for opportunity, I'm still putting the pieces together on that one, but the picture's coming in clear and it's not a pretty one, Terri."

"You're crazy," she scoffed.

"Oh gee, I've never been told that one before," he sarcastically replied, "Can you account for your whereabouts yesterday?"

"I don't have to answer that," Terri said.

"I've used that one myself a few times, it usually means you have something to hide," he reminded her.

"It means I'm done bringing up the past," Terri told him.

* * *

"K-Kellerman?" said Frank Pembleton, a bald black man in his 50s who ordinarily looked like he was weaned on a pickle, but now looked very confused as he tried to answer Munch's questions, "Y-You're asking me about M-ike Kellerman?"

"John, I don't think this is a good idea," Frank's wife, Mary told Munch, "Frank's still…"

"I I'm still rec-c-cuperating from this s-second stroke," Frank explained, "L-earning to talk for a third time, it'sssssss getting very o-o-old."

"I can understand that, Frank, but this is important, somebody drugged and attacked Mike last night when he was coming to see me in New York, now nobody in New York knew he was coming, if anybody would know it would be somebody here in Baltimore, have you spoken to him lately?"

"Mike? N-no," Frank shook his head, "I 'ave _n_ot."

"Know anybody who was?"

"N-noooo."

"Know anybody who'd like to see this happen to him?" When Frank opened his mouth to respond, Munch cut him off, "Other than Stivers, Falsone, or Lewis?"

"Ah then no," Frank said.

"Okay, I'll be on my way then," Munch headed for the door, stopped and turned around, "Oh by the way, Frank, did you see that Tim's getting paroled soon?"

"Tim?" Frank repeated, "No, I did…didn'…did not, know that."

"Looks like I'm not the only one who forgets about my partners once I leave them," Munch said, intending for that comment to sting a bit for Frank as he left.

* * *

Toni had found the clothes she'd been wearing the other night when she was brought to the hospital and stole them back from the orderly and discarded her sheet and gown for her jeans, T-shirt and dirty sneakers.

"I hate wearing hospital gowns," she said, "I hate being in hospitals, I'm getting to be an expert on them, like a restaurant critic."

"Sorry to hear that," Mike said from where he lay in his bed.

"Next I'll have to find your clothes and see if they're in any condition to wear out of here," Toni told him, "Wouldn't you like to get out of here and get an ice cold beer?"

"Sounds good," Mike groaned as he moved in the bed and stretched.

"You know, Mike, my place isn't too far away from here, and my father is shacked up in some hotel somewhere with one of the detectives, we could go there and be alone."

"The raging nymphomaniac strikes again," Mike laughed as he tried to sit up.

"Well, it's more private than the hospital, that's for damn sure," she said.

Toni picked up Mike's cell phone that was in his bag and she dialed Fin's cell number.

"Tutuola."

"Fin, do you know where John is?" Toni asked.

"What's going on?"

"I've tried calling him three times and he's not answering his phone, I don't know if he came back from Baltimore or not. Did he tell you anything?"

"No he didn't," Fin replied.

"Here's a stupid question, why didn't you go with him?" Toni asked.

"He said this was something he had to do himself," Fin answered.

"Uh oh," Toni said, "That sounds ominous, maybe you should go out there and make sure he's even still alive."

"Any idea _where_ in Baltimore he'd be?"

"In between questioning everyone?" Toni asked, "He wouldn't still be at the precinct…I have a few thoughts on where he might be, don't know if you'd be able to find them though…the grave of Al Giardello for one, also, that bar he owned, the Waterfront, it's been closed and gathering dust for years but you never know, he might have felt drawn back there for some stupid sentimental reason…I'd go out there and check on him myself if I could, but as you well know, my car's been totaled and I have to baby sit the private dick."

* * *

It was after 9 o' clock when Fin got into Baltimore, and going on 10 when he found the Waterfront. Indeed the building hadn't been used for anything since the bar closed its doors back in 2000, but it was still there, with the same sign and the same everything, at least he guessed it was all the same. Fin got out of the car and looked around, drawing out a flashlight and checking the windows; they were intact, but the window in the front door had been smashed and the door was open. Fin drew his gun out and cautiously headed in, calling out, "Munch, you in here?"

He heard movement from inside and made his way in, shining his light over everything, trying to see who was in there. He made his way to the back of the bar and found Munch huddled on the floor, leaning against the wall, quietly murmuring to himself, "Gee, they got their blood on my shoes", he sounded like he was crying and he seemed almost delirious.

"John, you alright?" he asked as he put his gun away and moved towards his partner.

Munch didn't seem to hear him, instead his balled one hand into a fist and repeated, "They got their blood on my shoes."

"John!" Fin said louder as he knelt down and got in his partner's face, "Can you hear me?"

Munch didn't answer him, Fin kept one hand on the flashlight so he could see to get them out without bumping into anything and he slipped his other arm around Munch's back and helped him get to his feet to get him out of there.

Once they were out of the bar, Munch seemed to become aware of his surroundings again. The first thing he said to Fin was, "I hate Baltimore."

"Yeah I hate it too," Fin said as he led Munch over to the car, "Come on."

"I mean I really hate it," he said as he broke away from his partner, "That's why I left in the first place, I was born and raised here, got my ass kicked every day, went into the police force, joined homicide, had four failed marriages here…and when the hell did we all get so old? Kay Howard, my former partner and sergeant, she's married with two kids, I remember when I burnt my nose on the grindstone trying to find out who her mystery boyfriend was and I never found out through all the strategies I tried. Frank Pembleton is an old man with two teenaged kids and he's trying to rebuild his ability to talk without sounding like Porky Pig."

"I take it you didn't get anywhere with them," Fin said.

"The only thing proven today is that time is not healing the wounds Stivers and Lewis are still wearing," Munch said, "Still mad as hell at Mike for his involvement in the Mahoney shooting, as if the whole damn thing was his fault alone, never mind the fact that Lewis had his own gun turned against him twice and he was getting the family to kill each other left and right and he can't control his temper enough not to break the nose of Luther's highly powerful sister Georgia Rae. Never mind the fact that Terri can watch the witness standing a few inches away from her take a bullet in the head that was meant for Stivers herself, and she has no emotion whatsoever but the day after Mahoney's shot she's complaining about being sick to her stomach from the shooting. Noooo, they put it all off on Mike, just like they did almost 10 years ago."

"People around here have a hard time moving on," Fin said.

"No kidding…and on top of it all, out of everybody I _do_ come out and see and talk to, it never once occurs to me to look up my own damn brother, Bernard, and see how he's doing, if he's even still alive, if our mother is still alive…man, when I left this place there wasn't _any_ looking back."

"Maybe with good reason," Fin replied, "You alright now?"

"I guess," Munch said with a sigh, "I have to be, not that it would matter if I wasn't. I stopped by the graveyard."

"Your old commander?" Fin asked.

Munch shook his head, "Luther Mahoney, the origin of all this trouble…he was popular at his funeral but his popularity has severely dwindled over the years, somebody knocked his tombstone out of the ground and smashed it to pieces…smashed all the bottles of wine and everything else that had been left there, once upon a time he got more gifts at his grave than Al Capone. Now it looks like his specific grave has its own caretaker and he's been dead for over a year. I still spat on it for good measure."

Out of nowhere, he hit his arm against the window of the car and yelled, "Damn him! Damn all of them! Luther, Georgia Rae, Junior Bunk, _Gordon Pratt_!"

"Take it easy, John!" the next thing Fin said came to him as an afterthought, "Who's Gordon Pratt?"

Munch forced himself to calm down and he brushed it off, "It doesn't matter, not anymore."

* * *

"So you tried to kill yourself, eh?" Toni asked Mike as they lay side by side in his hospital bed, "Doesn't sound like something an innocent person does."

"You weren't there," he said.

"No but then you weren't at Bellevue either."

"What happened at Bellevue?" Mike asked.

"I tried to kill myself," Toni told him.

Mike turned his head and looked over at her in disbelief.

"Oh yeah, everybody knows that story, and I'm getting tired of telling it, I had to tell it in court a couple years back, the defense attorney was trying to say I wasn't a credible witness because I'd attempted suicide…I still fail to see the connection between the two. Hell, even the damn doctor said normal people off themselves all the time. How'd you try it?"

"I've tried to forget," Mike said, "Think I was going to shoot myself."

"Not very original but if it works," Toni said.

"What'd you try?" he asked.

"I got a folding knife and I opened it up, stuck it in the mattress of that poor excuse of a hospital bed, and threw myself back on it, stabbed myself in the back." Toni sat up in the bed and took off her shirt and turned her back to him, "Should still have a scar from it and the surgery, course I can't see it, do I?"

"A little one," Mike said, "Some people think scars give people character."

"I read once when you die, God doesn't look you over for medals or diplomas or degrees, but for scars…if that's true, when my time comes He's going to have plenty look me over for," Toni said, "Scars from that, scars under this plastic surgery on my cheek, on my legs, I'm getting scars all over."

"Sounds like you've had a pretty brutal life," Mike commented.

"I find all life _is_ brutal, we can kid ourselves all we want," she said as she put her shirt back on again, "Everybody has traumas starting from birth that will stay with them until they die, and then the dying is brutal too."

"Are you sure you're not related to Munch?" Mike asked her.

Toni evaded the comment and changed the subject, "So tell me about Tim Bayliss, you work with him?"

"Eh, a little."

"What was he like?" Toni asked, "From the newspaper reports he doesn't sound like the kind of guy who _would_ kill someone."

"Nobody thought that, he was…I don't know, so naïve, so…"

"Innocent?" Toni suggested.

"I guess so."

"And that doesn't work well in an extremist environment like a homicide squad, he probably got crap for it every day until he finally snapped, most likely from his co-workers for the most part."

"From what I remember, they didn't help," Mike said.

"Nice guys should never get pushed," Toni said, "The outcome's never pretty, you should know, look at yourself."

Mike snorted, "Thanks a lot."

"I mean it, I like you, Mike," she said, "And that's no easy feat because I don't like anybody, except Munch."

"I find that hard to believe," he told her.

"Well it's true," she said, "I'm not a nice person and I'm not nice to anybody, everybody knows it, that's why the only person I'll let myself get attached to is Munch, because we're alike."

"But you know Munch isn't _really_ like that."

"Of course not, it's just his defense, he pretends he doesn't care, and that gets easier all the time, but he does, you can tell," she said, "He's got a good heart, even if he'll never admit it. Now if _anybody_'s life sucks, I'd say it's him, his father blew his brains out, he's not on good terms with his mother or his brother, he's been married four times, all busts, no kids, his partners drop like flies, what more, the only woman he cares about these days is one of the detectives he works with, Olivia Benson, but she's in Jersey with my father, and most likely in bed currently…but you can't tell John that, he'd go through the roof. And I'm more than a coconspirator on that last charge because I'm the one who brought him and her together. I feel bad for John and his lack of a love life but he had four shots at it, my father's been by himself since he was widowed 18 years ago, and Olivia's never even been married, so I took the two nearest points and drove them both together. Now I've just got to find somebody to put off on Munch, he used to have this other partner, another woman, Monique Jeffries, but she's been gone for several years, I never even met her."

The occupant on the other side of the bed started to laugh and Toni looked over at him, "What is it?"

"I was just thinking," Mike said, "There's always you."

Toni laughed and replied, "Not me."

"Why not, because of his age?" Mike asked.

"That doesn't bother me," Toni said, "No, because two poisons don't equal a cure, I'm arsenic, he needs an antidote..."

"Know anybody for that position?" he asked her.

"For him, no, but for myself," Toni looked him up and down once again, "I think we ought to check out of this roach motel."

Mike laughed and threw his head back against the pillow, "And where would you have me listed, among the best or worst?"

"Couldn't tell until I look under the hood," Toni told him jokingly, "But if first impressions are worth anything, I'd say near the top."

"You know, Toni," Mike said, inching away from her, "I think I know somebody we could try pawning off on John, if I could find her again."

"Who?"

"Julie Cox, she was our medical examiner when I worked homicide..." he winked at her, "And I happen to know she wasn't bad in bed either. And it's to my understanding that Munch has a thing for women M.E.'s."

"Now that'd be a first for John," Toni said, "He'd be taking somebody else's girl for a change instead of somebody taking his. What do you mean if you could find her again? She get lost?"

"She was fired from the medical examiner's office after she refused to alter records to say that a hit and run man was drunk when his blood alcohol level was not as high as she was told to make it. After that, she left Baltimore, came back when Gee was shot..."

"She just left?" Toni asked, "For something like that? Why didn't she take it to the press? That would give them a heyday, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know, I didn't ask her," Mike said, "I never thought of it, she probably didn't either."

"Well why not? She was already fired, what more could they do to her?" Toni asked, "She'd get to go on TV, tell her story, sell the rights and retire a rich woman."

Mike laughed, "Do you always look at things with a bright side like that?"

"Why not? Life's bleak enough as it is, why encourage the bleakness?" she replied, "I've had enough of it to last me the rest of my life, if I didn't have a bright side to look on, I would perfect my knife act."

"Hmmm, never thought of it like that," Mike said.

"You're young," Toni told him, "You'll learn...now if only Munch could."


	5. Chapter 5

"Well going back to Baltimore was a bust," Munch announced as he and Fin reentered Mike's hospital room, "Nobody at the old unit knows anything about anything."

"Or so they say," Toni suggested.

"You don't sound convinced," Fin said.

"Cuz I'm not," Toni said, "We're all adults here, just about everybody back there who's not dead or in jail has something in for Mike, whether or not it's his fault."

"What've the doctors said?" Munch asked.

"Nothing new," Mike told him, "Every few hours they come in to poke and prod me and feed me more pills."

"John, I say we get him some clothes and get him the hell out of here," Toni said, "This isn't a healthy environment, it's a hospital."

"That's the point," he reminded her, "Look Toni, you weren't seriously banged up in the crash, why don't you check out and go home?"

"Home!" she said, "Why would I go home? There's nobody there…I…" Toni spun around on her heel and said to Fin, "I've got to get into New York City and see Jack McCoy." Then she spun again and said, "John, when we crashed I had a camera and some pictures in the car, _please_ tell me they weren't destroyed."

Munch shook his head, "I collected everything removed from your car and have it in my desk at the precinct."

Toni turned back to Fin, "Well?"

Fin sighed and said, "Alright, I'll ride you over."

"Wait a minute," Munch turned to her, "What do you have to see Jack about?"

"Murder," Toni answered as she followed Fin out of the room, she looked back to Mike and waved, "See you later, Mike, hope you feel better!"

* * *

"You _do_ realize how bad your case is looking, don't you?" Arthur Branch asked Jack McCoy during a lunch break outside the courthouse.

Jack slowly nodded his head and replied, "I know."

"You were lucky to even get this case _past_ the grand jury," Arthur reminded him, "You can't tie Phelps to the murder, he's got a perfect alibi, appointment at the dentist getting an impacted wisdom tooth extracted, and his doctor's got the records to prove it."

"Arthur, I _know_ he murdered John Rossmore."

"Yeah, but you can't prove it," Arthur said, "The papers are eating this up."

"I haven't been paying attention," Jack defensively replied.

"Pity, they've got some real yarns, saying you're over the hill, burnt out, some are even saying senile," Arthur told him.

Jack glared at him and said, "I know there are a few people who'd love to see me carted off to Bellevue in a straitjacket."

"Well," Arthur suggested, "Maybe the time's come to enforce a little reverse psychology on the jury. You're going out there dead serious and everybody's making you the court jester, maybe if you started acting a little loopy they'd start buying your case."

"I don't think so, Arthur," Jack said.

Both men's attention was drawn to the noise of car tires screeching and they saw a car pull up and Toni Keller got out and came running up to them.

"Jack, is the trial over yet?" she asked.

"Almost," Arthur answered.

"Miss Keller, what're you doing here?" Jack asked.

"I've been reading in the papers that your case is not looking too good, you're having some trouble linking Jacob Phelps to the murder of John Rossmore, I hear that he has an excellent alibi," she said.

Jack reluctantly nodded his head, "It would seem so."

"Wrong," she told him, "And I've got the proof to it."

"You what?" he asked.

"How much time is there before court resumes?" she asked.

"About half an hour," Arthur answered.

"Perfect, come on, Jack," Toni pulled on his wrist, "I'll explain inside."

Arthur followed behind them and commented more to himself than to the others, "Never a dull moment in this court."

* * *

Jack practically ran into the courtroom when it resumed, his first words to the judge were to call forth a new witness. The defense objected since they had no idea about the witness, to which Jack replied his new witness had just come forth with new evidence in the case. The judge thought the whole thing would prove to be very amusing at the least and he allowed it.

"The People call Toni Keller to the stand," Jack said.

Toni was sworn in and seated and Jack came up near her and started asking her questions, "What's your name, miss?"

"Toni Keller," she answered.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"Why, you looking for a date?" she asked.

There were some giggles from spectators but the judge shut them up quickly, Jack continued, "Why are you here today, Miss Keller?"

"I came here to offer some new evidence on this murder trial," she said.

"Oh really?" Jack asked, he looked confused and asked her, "Are you a police officer?"

"No."

"You're not a medical examiner are you?" he asked.

Toni shook her head, "Nothing of that sort."

"Miss Keller, what _do_ you do?" he asked.

"I'm a writer for a magazine," she said.

"True crime?" Jack asked.

"Objection," the defense attorney said.

"No," Toni replied, "Just a general one. I also work temporarily as a house painter but in that regard I'm currently unemployed."

"So," Jack paced about as he asked her, "What qualifies you to say you have evidence that pertains to this case?"

"Well I've been following the story in the papers," Toni said, "And when the police first questioned Jacob Phelps, his alibi was that he couldn't possibly have murdered John Rossmore, on the day of March 24th, around 11 A.M., because he had an emergency appointment at his dentist to get a tooth extracted."

"Yes," Jack told her, "And we've all seen Dr. Hines' reports and files showing that that was true."

"Mr. McCoy," Toni said, "Have you ever had a tooth extracted?"

"Me?" asked, "No."

"I have, four times," Toni told him, "Very painful procedure, even _with_ anesthetics, what they call pliers they're basically cutting your teeth out with a flathead screwdriver. Now the first couple of times you get this procedure done, when it's over they give you a card of instructions that you absolutely _must_ follow for as much of an uncomplicated and not entirely uncomfortable recovery as you can get. The first rule is that you are given a cup of gauze to bite down on the hole with, and you must change them every 15 minutes for a couple of hours. The next rule is that for the next 24 hours following the extraction, you can only eat soft foods. And the third rule is that also for the next 24 hours, you cannot drink _anything_ through a straw because the suction dislodges the blood clots and then you're in for real trouble with the recovery."

"I'm a little confused, Miss Keller," Jack said, "What does any of this have to do with the murder case?"

"I turned 21 a few months ago and I got a new camera as a present, and this is a kind that time stamps all the pictures…and I was painting a house that day, but work was slow so while I was waiting around I decided to get some pictures to try the new camera out, so I just took a bunch of random pictures."

"And?"

"Well I didn't get the roll filled up, that took a few more times which occurred over the course of a few weeks. I only recently got the film developed…as I said the pictures were time stamped, so they had the day's date on them. And it turns out that the first batch of pictures I took were on March 24th, around 2 o' clock in the afternoon."

"Miss Keller, do you have this pictures with you?" Jack asked her.

"You know I do, I showed them to you," she answered.

The spectators got out a few laughs again but quickly quieted down. Toni handed the pictures to Jack and he handed them to the jurors to pass around and look over.

"It wasn't until I was reading about the murder trial that I saw Phelps' picture and realized I had gotten a couple of photos of him during this. As you can see, he's walking in the middle of the street just a few blocks away from where the murder occurred, and he's drinking a can of soda through a straw, most likely to avoid splashing any of it on his nice suit. Now nobody who had just gotten an extraction a couple hours before would do that, so the only logical conclusion is that he did _not_ get a tooth extracted that morning; so either his appointment was later than he said, or he purposely had a tooth extracted for no medical purpose but merely in order to create an alibi."

The courtroom was abuzz with people murmuring and talking to each other.

Jack still didn't appear satisfied, "But, we've already seen the dentist's records offered into evidence confirming he was there at 9 that morning."

Toni Keller's look was a poker face as she said, "The police who initially investigated the homicide thought that the killer had a partner, and since dentists don't make it a habit of forging inaccurate records for their patients, the partner in question seems to have been identified."

"No more questions," Jack said as he went back to his table.

The defense attorney for Phelps was dumbstruck and when he finally managed to speak the only thing he could say was, "I have no questions for this witness."

* * *

Fin saw Munch enter the squad room looking like he was ready to kill someone. "How's Mike?" he asked.

"Same, he doesn't know anything, the doctors are still taking turns poking at him, they think maybe by tomorrow he can get checked out."

"Hey John," Elliot called over from his desk, "How come you never told us about Mike before?"

"I never told you about any of my ex-partners from Baltimore before," Munch responded, "Why would I about Mike?"

"You never told us about the Mahoney thing either," Elliot said, "I barely remember even hearing about it."

"Yeah well…for the most part I wasn't there," Munch told him.

"But you think Mike's clean?" Elliot asked.

Munch hung up his jacket and stopped at Elliot's desk and said, "I _know_ he is." He went over to his desk as he added, "The irony of it all, he's the only person in the squad who does the right thing, and he gets thrown to the wolves for it while the rest of my brethren in homicide cover their asses and get to keep their cozy jobs and pensions and keep their good names." As he sat down he concluded, "For two cents I'd like to kick Meldrick Lewis so hard I bury my shoe right up his ass. In retrospect he was _the_ most unstable person we had, the _only_ idiot who could drive smack dab into the back of a parked coroner's van and say it wasn't his fault. I don't know why I _ever_ went into business with him."

Elliot opened his mouth to respond but stopped when he saw Olivia entering the squad room, "Hey Liv, where've you been?"

"I cashed in my vacation days last week," she said, "Didn't I tell you?"

"Must've been a warm climate," Munch told her, "You got a good tan."

Olivia tensed slightly when he said that and the color in her face deepened into a slight blush as she removed her jacket and said, "So, what's been going on while I've been gone?"

"It's a long and sordid story," Munch said, "But in layman's terms, an old partner of mine from Baltimore is here in New York and he was raped."

"That's terrible," Olivia said, "Any leads?"

"That ship has sunk," Fin told her, "We've already been up and down the whole list, nobody's looking good for it."

"Wrong," Munch shook his head, "Half my old squad looks good for it, I just can't prove it."

Nobody was paying attention but it was at that moment that Munch's demeanor changed as if he was suddenly hit with an idea. He started sorting through some files on his desk when his phone rang, he answered and had a very short and quiet conversation with whoever was on the other end before hanging up and getting up.

"What is it?" Elliot asked.

"That was Toni," Munch said as he headed out, "She needs me to pick her up from the courthouse…incidentally, I don't know what she did but Jack McCoy's got a new notch to carve in his dashboard, guilty in his latest murder case."

"So what's Toni been up to?" Olivia asked as she sat down at her desk.

"It's a long story," Elliot told her, "And it's all quicksand."

While Munch was gone, Fin filled Olivia in on what had been going on in Mike Kellerman's case and all the dead ends they'd run into. A short while later Cragen showed up and was surprised to see Olivia but eagerly welcomed her back and let her know she arrived at the right time because they were shorthanded. It was about an hour later that they saw Munch returning with Toni walking beside him.

"Hey Olivia," she said, "Nice to see you're back from your vacation, now Elliot can bother you and get off _my_ back."

Before anybody else could get a word out in response, Cragen said in a hint of desperation to her, "Please, don't tell me you need our help again because we've got enough problems as it is already!"

"Actually," Toni replied bitterly, "I was thinking I could help you, Alopecia." As they walked further into the squad room, Toni explained, "Munch was telling me that you have some other cases on file that are similar to Mike's attack."

"What're you talking about?" Elliot asked.

"Fin and I have worked another case with similar details," Munch explained as he went to his desk and took several large photos out of the file and headed over to the board to pin them up, "I wasn't making the connection because we all had a share of them and there was a significant amount of time occurring between them…they're all cold cases we haven't been able to crack yet."

"I remembered something I had told Mike at the hospital the other day," Toni explained to the others, "And I think I've got the insight you need for your perp."

"How do you figure that?" Elliot asked.

"I think I know the mind of your perp very well," Toni said, "The other day when I was in the hospital with Mike, I told him if I was in any mood for it, his would be the first bones I'd jump. There was just something about him…only it isn't him exactly, it's his type."

That had their attention.

"What do you mean type?" Elliot asked.

"We all have our physical preferences, despite what we say about personality and intelligence coming first," Toni said, "It's something different for everybody, some people like the tall, dark and handsome type, others like the black curly haired Greek boys, or Latin,…I tend to go for the young looking medium built redheads and blondes…something to their appearance," she smiled mischievously as she further explained, "They just look so damn innocent, like you could strap them to the bed and when you're done you'd have to peel them off the ceiling with a spatula."

Munch pointed to the photos of the past victims, the first was a young red haired man with a bruised face, "Brian Quinn, 22-year-old redhead, was found dumped in an alley at 5:30 in the morning and was taken to Mercy General where a quick examination found he had been sodomized, again no hairs, no fibers, nothing." The second picture was of another young man, this one had black spiky hair, "Thomas Harmon, 23 years old, dumped out of a speeding car just a block from Bellevue. Liv, I believe you and Elliot had this one last month."

"He's not a redhead," Olivia said.

"That is insult to injury," Munch retorted, "You will recall his assailant hastily dyed his hair sometime during the ordeal, underneath that he was as orange as a carrot. It was most likely done so we wouldn't draw the connection, but once again, he had been penetrated but a rape kit couldn't find anything. And now, our own dear Mike Kellerman, who is much older than he looks; he's 20-some years from getting a pension but he still looks like he needs to be carded to buy a beer." By now Munch was starting to heat up like a coffee pot on a high burner, "This wasn't some dumb kid who didn't know anything and who couldn't protect himself, he was a homicide cop for crying out loud!"

"Had the other two men been drugged?" Toni asked.

"Yeah," Munch nodded, "But not with GHB, sleeping pills."

"He's escalating then," Olivia said, "If he's now using a date rape drug."

"He?" Toni repeated, and shook her head as she grimly laughed, "No, Olivia, that's the whole point here…there were no fluids or hairs found because they weren't penetrated by a man."

"You mean a woman raped these guys?" Elliot asked.

She looked at him smugly and remarked, "Well I know that's not a very popular idea but yes, that's what I'm saying…a woman did this."

"Why?" Olivia asked.

"Obviously she's psychotic," Toni said, "A safe bet would be some kind of psychosexual disorder perhaps. These aren't the dark and charming stranger types, they give off an air of being naïve boys, and with an experienced woman it'd be like throwing a virgin into the prison rodeo."

"And you know this?" Elliot asked.

"I told you before, Elliot, I have a good idea I know the mindset of this woman. I tend to look at these types of guys the same way, only I don't go for that weird stuff, it's just plain sex, the difference is I restrain myself from acting on my impulses. Despite what our society wants us to believe, we are still in full control of our actions and lack thereof, addiction and impulses can be beaten by willpower; but people don't use it, and our society is coming to accommodate them by telling them it isn't their fault, but it is."

"You really believe that?" Cragen asked.

"You're a recovering booze bag aren't you?" Toni asked, "Why haven't you broken that? The urge is still there, you still want to drink but you don't. AA didn't rewire who you are, it didn't take out that part of the brain that tells you you want to drink, _you_ are what's keeping you from getting smashed when you go into a bar. You resist the temptation because you know you don't want to revert back to the way you were before. Change comes only in people who _want_ to change."

"And what about our mystery woman here?" Olivia asked, "It isn't just sex here, she is torturing these men."

"I said she was psychotic," Toni said, "My guess is she wants to punish them for something, she wants them to suffer and she thinks she has a justified reason to _make_ them suffer. It could be some young redhead did something to her once and she's taking it out on everyone who looks like him or it could be something on a different level altogether. I don't know, you'd have to talk to the expert in sex psychos for the answer to that one, incidentally where _is_ Huang?"


	6. Chapter 6

"What're the chances that Toni's right about this?" Olivia asked Huang as he went over the information about the victims.

"It's definitely possible," he told them, "There still isn't much known about the minds of female rapists because most of their victims don't come forth and we can't find out who they are…but, going by what we do know, I'd say that you're looking for a woman who was traumatized when she was younger."

"Every abuser was abused but not everybody who was abused becomes an abuser," Munch said, "How long is it going to be before that record gets changed?"

"I don't buy it," Toni said, "I doubt every single man who ever raped his wife or girlfriend or some random woman in the street did it because he was abused and wants her to feel as powerless as he did…some men just love terrorizing everybody they can overpower."

"And women don't?" Elliot asked.

"We're not on as grand a scale as you are," Toni told him, "But we have our own place, and it's all off the books. Usually _our_ methods of terrorization are non-sexual ones, we like to settle for beating the crap out of people."

"Shut up, Munch," Elliot said.

"Did I say one word?" he asked, feigning innocence.

"So some guy with red hair did something to this chick that it screwed her up so bad she's sodomizing every redhead guy she meets?" Toni asked and shook her head, "Some people seriously need a life."

"One thing I can't figure out," Olivia said, "What is she using as her weapon of choice? None of the rape kits found any fibers or splinters, so no wooden objects were used…"

"Oh, I think she does just well by herself," Toni replied as she flexed the fingers on both her hands and told Olivia, "Maybe somebody who works in a proctology field perhaps?"

"That's not funny," Elliot told her.

"It's not meant to be," Toni said, "When men can't get an erection they often settle for their fingers, equality between the sexes and all that you know. But the next question is where're you going to find this woman? What other link can there be between the men?"

"What we need to do," Elliot said, "Is go back over every woman we interviewed in connection with the victims, every woman that they knew, that knew them, maybe even every woman who lived in the same buildings they did. We have to find something."

* * *

Olivia knew that something was up when she went to the ladies room and Toni followed behind her, but she wasn't ready for the conversation they had inside.

"Is my father back from Jersey as well?" she asked.

"Not yet," Olivia said, "He thought it would be a good idea to stay on another day so nobody would get suspicious, why?"

Toni leaned in to Olivia and said confidentially, "I want to get Mike out of that hospital before he goes stir crazy, and I'd like to get him someplace kind of _private_, you know?"

Olivia did a double take, "You can't be serious."

"Hey, he's still a man isn't he?" she asked, "Besides, you know what they say about getting back on a horse, might as well make sure everything's still working right on him."

"Toni, he was just raped, you said yourself, by a woman," Olivia told her, "What do you think he's going to do?"

"I think he'll understand the difference," Toni said, "I don't use force, that's the problem, you know the people always let everyone walk all over them," she gave a small sad smile and explained, "That's me…I was always the submissive one, everybody else was on top…I'll grant you I don't lay there like a zombie anymore but…I'm not dominating either. And don't forget old Mikey's got about 20 years on me, the old dog may not need to learn any new tricks."

Olivia got out a strangled laugh and said, "I can't believe you."

"So they tell me…so how was Atlantic City?"

Olivia got out a huff and said, "It was great…" she looked down toward the floor as she said, "I really like your father, Toni, he's…the first relationship I've had with a man for a long time."

"Try saying that and looking me in the eyes while you do it," Toni told her, "I told you before, Olivia, I'm happy for the two of you, it's time you both found somebody, I have no delusions about you replacing my mother, it's time for my father to move on with his life and find someone else…of course if you're still not sure if this is for you, he won't hold you to being loyal to him, I'm sure you can still find a few other guys to draw a comparison, who knows? Maybe you could find a few that you could mix and match simultaneously."

Olivia threw her head back and laughed.

* * *

Toni returned to the hospital that night with a change of her father's clothes so Mike could walk out with some dignity. As he got out of his bed she noticed he still had obvious difficulty moving around and walking.

"I suppose I should call us a cab," she said, "It's going to be a while before the garage can repair my father's car."

"How far is your home from here?" Mike asked as they walked out of the hospital and out into the dark of night.

"Oh, about 12 blocks I suppose," she said.

"The exercise will do me some good," he replied.

They made idle talk as they walked through the dimly lit streets until they came to Toni's house which sat empty and dark.

"Anybody home?" Mike asked as they went up the sidewalk.

"My father's still in Atlantic City, so it'll just be the two of us," she told him.

"Cozy," he remarked.

The front door creaked open and as they stepped into the dark hallway, Toni said in a Dracula impersonation, "Velcome to my humble abode."

"Not bad," Mike commented as he strained to see his new surroundings, "Uh, where exactly am _I_ going to be staying here tonight?"

"That would be upstairs, follow me," Toni said.

Mike climbed up the long stairwell behind her, in the dark, the only light hitting the walls and casting shadows came in through the windows from the street lamp on the corner. When they reached the top of the stairs she took him over to a room on the left; opening the door she showed him in, again the only light in the room came from the lamp outside, which still kept them very much in the dark but he was able to make out the bed, the trunk, the dresser, the bookcase, the piles of books on the floor and a few boxes.

"This is my room," she told him.

"Ah, the torture chamber, eh?" Mike laughed, "I'm sure it looks more impressive in the morning…but it looks nice like this too."

"It's home," she explained, "It's one of the first permanent homes I've had in a long time."

They stood almost pressed against one another; Mike being the taller one looked down at her and commented with a smirk, "You'll excuse me for saying it, Miss Keller, but in the dark…you look…"

"What?" she asked.

"Older," he answered, "Things are always so much different in the dark." He brought his hand up and stroked over her cheek with it as he said absentmindedly, "The darkness can take away everything, age, facts, the past, everything melts into darkness."

"And when the world is plunged into darkness," Toni responded, "That is in all actuality the most liberating time in the world because anything can go, nothing has to be seen, there can be no witnesses, it's all off the record."

Mike cupped her face in his hands and leaned down to kiss her; her arms were wrapped around his back and he soon became aware of the fact that his had returned the favor, but his hands had settled themselves lower down on her back than hers had on his. She didn't protest it, didn't try to pull away, she just looked up at him and met his gaze for a moment before she gave him a slight push and he fell back against the bed, and she quickly climbed on the bed beside him and then in one quick movement she rolled over on top of him and held him down.

* * *

Toni was awake when the sun came up the next morning; she turned over and saw Mike asleep on the other side of the bed. She kept her half of the sheet wrapped around herself as she inched up towards the head of the bed and reached over to touch him. She put her hand on his arm and he didn't respond, by all accounts he seemed to be dead to the world. If he looked young before he looked downright infantile now; all the worry lines gone from his face, his closed eyes relaxed, his mouth in a little smile.

She remembered the previous night very well; on the trunk behind the head of the bed were two glasses and a half empty bottle of bourbon. Mike had made some comment about falling off the wagon, and some mention of how it would probably make him wacky since he was on pain meds, but he still gladly drank two glasses with no coercion on her part. What happened last night hadn't been planned but she was thankful it had happened; she could feel something cross over in her and she felt like somebody had thrown the switch that restored the life into her body again.

"Mike Kellerman," she said quietly so as not to wake him, "I think I may be falling in love with you."

* * *

Mike was half singing something under his breath as he scrubbed the bar of soap over his arms as he sat in the bathtub. It was going on 7:30 and he had woken up feeling like a million bucks; his memory from last night was a bit fuzzy but he thought he remembered all the important stuff that had happened. Toni entered the bathroom carrying a laundry basket and she dug out another set of her father's clothes and told him, "These will be a little large but they should fit until you can get your own stuff back from the hospital laundry."

"Thanks," he replied.

"You know Munch is going to give your case all the attention he can, but today _is_ his day off and he and Odafin Tutuola are going bar shopping today," Toni said as she knelt down beside the tub so she could make eye contact with him, "I'm going with them later, do you want to come?"

"Sure, why not?" he asked, "Might be fun, be interesting to see if Munch can pick a better shack than he did with the Waterfront."

"Mike," Toni said, "You know Tim Bayliss is up for parole, do you think he'll get it?"

Mike paused and looked at her and said, "I don't know…I really don't know. I think he should get it but I don't know if he will."

"If he does," she continued, "Are you going to go see him when he gets out?"

"I don't know," he said, "I honestly don't know…he and I were never that close."

"Must be close enough, you thought his release was worth coming to New York to tell John about," she reminded him, "Which reminds me, John said there was used film in your camera, don't you have a client waiting on those pictures?"

"Yeah I thought about that," he told her, "Later I'm going to call and tell them there's been a minor delay in the case. One good thing about being a private detective, I don't have a boss to answer to, so I can only get fired from clients, not from my job."

"Tell me something, Mike, do you really miss working in homicide?" Toni asked, "Dead bodies, and unsolved cases, was it really all that glamorous?"

"Well anything was better than my father's glass plant, and any kind of steady work was an improvement over my two brothers," he recalled, "The last time those guys came to Baltimore…they about got me killed, thrown in jail to say the least, try to make an arrest and those smartasses stole my badge so I couldn't identify myself as a cop."

"But you were in arson before homicide," Toni remembered, "How'd you wind up there?"

"It's all quicksand, kid," he said as he shook his head.

"Mike, how old are you?" she asked him.

"39, how old are you?" he asked.

"Old enough," she told him, and in one sudden move she lunged over, grabbed him despite his soapy exterior and kissed him. She pulled back and said, "You know something, Mike?"

"What?" he asked.

"I think I like you," she answered.

* * *

Munch came to the house later to pick up Toni and Mike to show them the bar he'd found and was trying to talk Fin into buying. They met him at the door and Munch lowered his glasses to get a better look at Mike in a set of jeans and a T-shirt that were both too big for him.

"Did you shrink in the dryer?" he asked.

"Nice to see you too, John," he replied with a small smirk, "You ready to go?"

Munch raised his arm and gestured over to his car, "Your ride awaits."

As Mike walked past them, John looked at Toni and noticed something was different about her today. He told Mike they'd be on in a minute and for him to go ahead, keeping his voice low he asked Toni, "What went on here last night?"

"What do you mean, John?" she asked.

"Something about you has changed since yesterday," Munch said, "What is it? Where's your usual early morning 'don't bug me, I'll kill you' look? You're practically…" his whole facial expression changed as it hit him, "Did you sleep with Mike?"

Toni neither confirmed nor denied, she only looked at him with a big dumb grin on her face. John looked at her and then over to Mike who was waiting in the car, and then back at Toni and said, "Oh my God, you, you and Mike?" He muttered something in Yiddish and said, "I don't believe it."

"I know," she told him, "I wasn't really planning on it either, but I brought him home and we had a few drinks, and then…"

"Don't draw me a picture," he said, "I can't believe it, Toni, he's twice your age."

"I know that, John, I can count," she replied, "You're not mad about it, are you?"

"Me?" he asked, then it hit him how he must've appeared and he told her, "I'm just surprised, I didn't see this coming."

"Neither did Mike," Toni said.

"What happened to you restraining yourself?" Munch asked.

"Even a trained dog needs to get off the chain and run loose once in a while," she said, "And Mike was perfectly willing."

"I'll bet he was," John said, "I just can't believe it…" she looked at him and he put his hands up, "I know, I know, you're 21, you can do what you want, this is just a shock to me…I guess you could do worse. I guess I should just be happy for the two of you that you found each other, and not somebody else."

Toni tore up laughing at that and he asked her, "What is it?"

"John, I lied," she said, "I didn't have sex with Mike, I did bring him home and we did have a few drinks…I had planned on landing him but…we just wound up conking out together…I just wanted to see how you would react."

Munch felt like he'd been hit with a bucket of ice water, "Well now you know!" In a calmer voice he said, "So speaking from a purely platonic nature, how was he?"

She laughed and looked down momentarily before making eye contact with him and explaining, "It was nice having somebody to wake up beside again…I haven't been with anybody in a long time, and I never wanted to be with anyone I _was_ with before…and I didn't want to repeat those mistakes, so I just kind of steered clear of anybody I might like. But it's just…the presence, _knowing_ he's there, you know?"

"Unfortunately I do," Munch told her, "The heart is a lonely hunter, and I have four ex-wives under my belt and since soliciting prostitutes for even non-sexual purposes is a scandal waiting to happen, I've had many nights spent in a bed only half full." He flashed a small smile at her and said, "Come on, I want you to see this place."

* * *

"This place is a dump," Fin said as he looked around the long since closed bar that was for sale.

"You're just not looking at it right," Munch said, "Picture it freshly cleaned, painted, maybe get some of the wiring reworked…"

"Right, by the time we get this place open, it's going to cost both our pensions," Fin told him.

"Oh ye of little faith," Munch responded, "You forget I've been through this wringer before, I know what to do this second go-round…" he turned to Mike and Toni and asked them, "What do you think of the place?"

"It looks alright," Mike said.

"Better than some places I've frequented," Toni added, "John, now that Olivia's back, why don't you ask her about being a partner too? If she says yes, then the expenses won't run so far for any of you."

"That's not a bad idea," John said, "I'll run it by her when I see her."

Toni went over to him and said, "John, I know you're serious about doing this and I want to show my support, so I want to give you something, here."

John felt something shoved into his hand and he looked and saw it was a small wad of $100 bills, he counted through them and told Fin, "There's a thousand dollars here." To Toni he said, "I know you don't make enough writing for that magazine to afford this, where'd you get this money from?"

"Never mind," she told him, "I can't be a partner because I would never pass the background check, and I know this isn't going to help much but it'll come in handy somewhere, it's the only way I could see to help and I wanted to because I think you need something to fall back on incase you decide to transfer out of SVU and out of the police department entirely."

John and Fin looked at each other and neither said anything; Munch looked back to Toni and said, "That's certainly some long term planning, and I really appreciate it…if you're sure."

"Take it, the money doesn't mean anything to me," she insisted, "I want to see how you could run this place."

Munch turned to Fin and said, "Well so far we seem to be doing alright, we have a location, we have the money, I have the numbers of all the electricians and plumbers we'll need to get everything up to code, I also have a better tax attorney this time than my cousin who ran us into the ground, all we have to do now is come up with a name for the place."

"If you say the Waterfront, I swear I'm going to kill you," Fin told him.

"Alright, then somebody else can go first," Munch said.

"I have an idea," Toni said, "What about Pandora's Bottle?"

They looked at her like she was crazy, and she explained, "Consider Pandora's Box, something went wrong with the translation and originally it was Pandora's jar, and a bottle is a lot closer to a jar than a box is. So on the surface it's mysterious, and the intrigue might draw the crowd in."

"I thought the contents were supposed to bring about the end of the world," Fin said.

"No, it's just all the ugliness that exists in the world and in humanity," Munch said, "An ideal description for the stuff we'll be serving in here, as well as the people we'd be serving."

* * *

Through the rest of his day off, John went over the facts he currently had on Mike's case, and from the other unsolved rapes, and the more he thought about it, the less sense it was starting to make. The next day he returned to work bright and early and was relieved to find that SVU was calling on the help of George Huang once again so he could speak to the man.

"I think we made a mistake the other day," he said, "About the attacks being linked together."

"What do you mean, John?" he asked.

"I've been going over the details over and over again," Munch said with a shake of his head, "They're _similar_ but they don't match…let's assume that there are two different people, two different _women_ responsible for these attacks…could they both be operating under the same MO? Or is there a chance the one who attacked Mike is a copycat just looking for attention?"

Huang's eyes narrowed and he shook his head, "I don't know what you mean, John."

"Alright, I'll try it again," he said.

But he didn't get a chance to because Elliot and Olivia came up and inquired as to the latest in Mike's case.

"There's something that's not connecting," John said, "The first two cases might be connected but they're not to Mike's…Quinn and Harmon were both assaulted and then dumped somewhere, Mike was able to get in his car and _attempt_ driving somewhere after he was raped, Quinn and Harmon were knocked out with sleeping pills, but Mike was specifically given a date rape drug, why?"

His thoughts were interrupted when his cell phone rang and he took it to a lesser crowded area of the squad room to answer it, leaving Elliot, Olivia and Huang to discuss it amongst themselves.

"Could it be two different perps?" Olivia asked.

"It's definitely possible," Huang said, "We assumed they were all committed by one woman who is escalating but John was right, the switch from tranquilizers to HGB would make sense but not the part about letting Mike get away instead of dumping him somewhere like the others were."

"But everything else is consistent, and that's rare," Olivia said, "Usually something is discovered in a rape kit but in all three of these, there's nothing to find."

From the corner of the squad room they heard Munch let out a small string of obscenities as he put his phone away and further commented, "I need help, I'm going to kill someone and I need backup."

"What is it?" Olivia asked.

"That was Toni, a couple of uniforms picked her up in connection to the rapes, they think she attacked Mike and those other guys!"

"What?" Elliot asked.

"Why?" Olivia added as they grabbed their jackets to go with him.

"I don't know, but somebody's going to die for this," Munch said as he headed to the door, "I've said it before but this time I am going to kill somebody!"

"We're right behind you," Elliot said, "Lead the way."


	7. Chapter 7

The door was kicked open and Munch stepped in ahead of Olivia and Elliot and was barking at the people inside, "Out of my way, I'm a sergeant, what the hell is going on around here?"

Toni stood in the middle of three unis and had her arms folded tightly against her chest and she rushed over to John as she said, "Thank God you're here!"

"What the hell is going on here?" Munch asked her.

Toni pointed back to the uniformed men and said, "They're trying to rape me. They told me to take my clothes off!"

"What?" Elliot said in disbelief.

"Ask them where their warrant is because they sure as hell wouldn't show it to me!" Toni said, "Talking about a strip search, looking for something!"

"Oh ho ho," Munch started laughing as he got in the unis' faces, "The press is going to love this one…now as the Sergeant of Manhattan SVU I have to ask, you gentlemen wouldn't be holding a Special Victim under false arrest for the sole purpose of sexually harassing, exploiting and assaulting her, now would you?"

"No sir," one of the cops replied, "We picked her up in connection to a rape that occurred last night."

"What?" Olivia asked.

"Who?" Elliot asked.

"Yeah they 'picked me up' alright," Toni said, "Practically come busting into _my_ house and hauling me out telling me I'm under arrest for raping some guy I never even heard of!" To Munch she added, "First they think I shot Jack McCoy, now they think I raped Mike and three other guys, exactly _what_ does the NYPD have against me? What did I ever do to them?"

* * *

"I'm getting another headache," Cragen told Casey.

"Try Alka-Seltzer," she replied, "I hear it works wonders."

"A fourth male victim is raped and we're out of the loop on this one?" Cragen asked Elliot and Olivia.

"If the victims don't report to SVU, how can we be expected to investigate?" Elliot wanted to know, "Instead these three unis straight out of the academy get the call."

"How?" Fin asked.

"Why?" Olivia added.

"I don't know, but nobody in the D.A.'s office had any search warrant signed compelling Toni Keller to submit to a strip search," Casey told them.

"That would explain why they wouldn't show it to Toni," Munch said, "But then the question is where did these knuckleheads come from?"

"And who _is_ this victim?" Olivia asked.

"Whoever he is, I don't know him," Toni said, "And even if I did, they can't pin this on me, I was home last night."

"All night?" Elliot asked.

"Yes," Toni told him, "My car's still smashed to hell."

"There's always a cab," he said.

"I hate taxis," she replied.

"Nobody's accusing you," Munch said.

"The cops did," she said, "And a defense attorney will."

"We'll get to the bottom of that, don't worry," he told her.

"Easy for you to say," she said, "John, my father is coming home today, for God's sake! What am I going to tell him?"

Something hit Olivia and she asked, "Toni, where's Mike?"

"He's…oh God," Toni looked like she'd been hit with a bucket of ice, "I don't know, he was at the house earlier…I don't, I don't know!"

"Alright, calm down," Munch told her, "I'll take you back to the house, you stay there, we'll figure out what the hell's going on."

"I hope so," Toni said, "I don't mind my name being dragged through the mud but it's getting tired." She turned to Elliot and said, "Although I did enjoy that little scene you caused when you threatened to kick that one cop's butt up to his teeth."

"They had no right forcing you to submit to that strip search," he told her.

"Why?" she asked, "Because I'm a woman or because you know me? If it had been a male suspect would you say the same thing?"

"Now is not the time for the lecture on equality of the sexes," John told her, "Come on."

Toni looked back to Elliot and the others and commented, "Gordon Liddy said no judge is going to sign off on a warrant based on an anonymous tip without interrogating the unknown informant first. If there's no warrant to be found, these guys came in without one and are doing this just for the hell of it because they think they can get away with it. You guys _better_ prove them wrong on that one."

"We will," Munch assured her, "Come on."

* * *

They pulled up at the Keller house just in time to see Toni's father, Tony Keller, walking up the street with a travel bag in his hand. Toni broke away from Munch and ran over to her father.

"Oh Daddy am I glad to see you," she said as she threw her arms around him, "Something's wrong."

"What is it?" he asked, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she said, "But…the car's been totaled."

"What?" he asked, not getting it.

"Come on in, it's a long story," she said to him as the three of them headed up to the front door.

The door opened and the three stepped in and immediately were met with the sight of Mike, who looked very confused at what was going on.

"Mike, are you alright?" Toni asked as she went over to him.

"Who's this?" Tony wanted to know.

Toni looked back to her father, with one hand squeezing Mike's assuredly she said, "This is Mike Kellerman, he was John's old partner in homicide. He…he's been staying here while John works on his case."

"What case?" Tony asked.

Toni looked back to Mike as if trying to figure out what to do, Mike only nodded and told her, "It's alright."

"What happened," Munch stepped in, "Was a few nights ago, somebody attacked Mike, they drugged him and in his compromised state, he crashed his car into yours and knocked both himself and your daughter into the hospital for the night."

Already Munch could see he had Tony's full attention. "Who did it?" he wanted to know.

"That's what we're all trying to find out," Munch said, "We have reason to believe Mike's case is tied to several others, we seem to have a serial rapist in the area targeting redheaded men. Our psychiatrist believes it's a woman."

"And the cops picked me up for it," Toni added, "They thought I did it."

"What!" Tony looked ready to shoot through the roof.

"Nobody in our unit, Mr. Keller," Munch assured him, "Three rookies just in uniform…though I have my suspicions about them."

"Why's that?"

"Well for one thing, when they tried to submit Toni to a strip search, they failed to show a warrant, and nobody in the D.A.'s office has _had_ any such warrant signed."

"Which means they made it up," Toni said.

"Agreed," Munch told her, "But I don't think these guys have a whole brain cell between them, they're not smart enough to come up with a story like this by themselves, they had help."

"Who?" Tony wanted to know.

"That's what I'm going to find out," Munch replied, "But, for the time being, I need my victim in a place I know he's safe, and I need Toni out of sight and trouble as well."

"John," Toni said, "What did I _ever_ do to the police department?"

"Toni, we all know you're not responsible for what's going on," Munch said, "And I'm going to find out who is and nail his ass to the wall."

"Or hers," Toni suggested.

"Hers?" the men asked.

"The rapist is a woman, who's to say the brains behind my arrest wasn't also? Take the focus off one woman with another, who's the wiser? After all," she added bitterly, "I'm sure if you ask the right people they'll agree that we all just kind of look alike."

* * *

"We checked out officers Ramirez, Harris, and Bronson," Elliot said in the squad room as he pinned the pictures of the three unis up on the board, "They're all legitimate at the 1-9 precinct, just out of the academy. So far their records are clean, no complaints, charges, or lawsuits against them, which of course doesn't mean anything."

"Of course not," Olivia scoffed, "We know how that game goes, they cover each other's asses all the way."

"Now, since you're the one with the elbow grease," Elliot said to Cragen, "Did you manage to get a word in with their superior?"

"Don't be a smartass, Elliot," he warned him, "Yes I talked to their captain, he doesn't know anything about the case, not about Toni, or this unknown victim, none of it."

"They really _are_ rookies," Fin commented, "They don't know how to lie right."

"But that means Toni's right," Munch said, "And that means somebody put them up to it, so let's think about this, who has enough muscle to coerce cops into something? And up front we can exclude the Mafia because I doubt they have any interest in our victims."

"What's all this about a strip search?" Cragen wanted to know.

"Harris claims that their vic was able to identify Toni due to a mark on her body," Elliot explained.

"Well she doesn't have any tattoos, and no birthmarks," Munch said, "So what's left to look for?"

"If that's the case, then they have the wrong woman, which we already know," Elliot said.

"We're going in circles here," Cragen said, "What the hell is going on?"

"I don't know," Fin replied, "But here's what I know, if Toni's not our perp then that means new vic or no new vic, we still have a serial rapist on the loose who is at this time sizing up her next guy. How do you warn against something like this? It's not like we can broadcast 'all guys with red hair take caution'."

"Is there a connection to where the first two vics were dumped?" Cragen asked.

"Only that they were done within a 2 mile radius of each other, that's not much to go on," Munch said.

"They're all young," Olivia said, "Maybe our perp picks guys who frequent the night clubs, or bars."

Fin looked to Cragen and said, "This is turning into a witch hunt."

"Go back over the victims' statements, see what they had spent the nights of their attacks doing," Cragen told them.

* * *

"Have you found anything in the case yet?" Toni asked John and Fin when she saw them the next day. They were off duty and once again looking over the bar that John apparently had his heart set on.

"We're going over every microscopic detail with a magnifying glass, I still stand by my belief that Mike's case is separate from these other two," Munch told her.

"I still say it's a mistake to buy this place," Fin told him as he picked up a dirty dust rag from the counter, the same way that he would pick up a rat by the tip of its tail so he didn't have to touch it much.

"I don't know," Mike said as he came up to the counter beside Toni, "I kind of like it."

Toni turned to Mike and said, "I heard that the reason this place shut down in the first place was due to bad publicity because several years ago, a pimp who came in here got his brains knocked out with a bowling pin!"

Fin tossed the dust rag over his shoulder and said, "That's it, I'm out of here."

Munch grabbed him by the back of his jacket, "Come on, Fin, this could be the best thing we've done yet as far as our careers go."

"Speak for yourself," Fin said.

"Of course there are a lot of bars in New York so yours has to have a specific reason why people would want to come here," Toni told them, "What's your selling point?"

Munch seemed to already have an answer to that. "This is not a sports bar, people are not going to be coming here to watch basketball games on flat screen TVs suspended from the ceiling. There's not going to be a hundred drunken idiots screaming over the latest game score; this is a bar to come and relax, to find yourself, so to speak, a nice, quiet bar where people can get a drink and be let alone."

"Tell me you didn't use that slogan to sell the Waterfront," Fin said.

"Shut up," Munch replied.

"Well you sold me on it," Toni said, "When do we start building?"

Fin smirked and, looking over at Mike asked him, "So Mike, how're you taking staying with the Kellers?"

"We get along just fine," Toni answered for him, "My dad really likes having him around."

"Yeah I was surprised," Mike said, "Ordinarily I don't think a father would take so kindly to finding a 40 year old man staying with his daughter."

"Well Tony Keller is an exception to most things," Munch told him, "In time you'll probably find that out."

"Mike," Toni turned to him, "Do you remember _anything_ about who attacked you? The cops who busted me said their victim got a good enough look at his attacker's body to see an identifying mark on her, but nobody's telling us what it is. That's why they're trying to get me to do a burlesque number."

Mike shook his head, "I'm sorry, I just can't remember."

"Don't worry about it," Munch told him, "We're going to get to the bottom of this whole thing, I don't know who these Keystone Kops are but they're not going to get away with this. This alleged case of theirs is nonexistent and we're going to prove it."

* * *

"What the hell do you mean you're considering their case?" Toni asked Cragen the next night when they were called into his office.

"Elliot and Olivia got to speak with this new 'victim', one Richard Bierce, aged 25, another redhead who said he was raped by a woman," Cragen said, "There are certain details in his account that match with Mike's case and the other two victims. Details that were not released to the public when the news stories broke."

"What kind of details?" Toni asked.

Cragen didn't answer her and only said, "Elliot."

Elliot took out folded legal pad sheets and read from it, "Bierce: 'I was coming home from work and decided to stop in a bar and have a drink first. When I left I started to feel sick and I must've blacked out. I woke up in a dimly lit room and saw her on top of me. She looked about 20, maybe older, average height, average size, short brown, reddish hair, I tried to get up but she pushed me back against the bed. My clothes were gone, she started to take hers off. She had a mark on her right breast, I blacked out again after that. I came to and she was gone, I was on the floor in the room. My whole body hurt, I _knew_ that I'd been penetrated. I got my clothes on and got the hell out. I found out I was in a motel room a couple of blocks from the hospital'. He didn't go to the hospital because he was too embarrassed so we can't be sure that like the other cases there was no trace evidence left that is long gone by now."

"But he's the only guy who claims to have woken up to see his attacker," Olivia said, "That's the part that doesn't make any sense."

"Regardless," Cragen added, "Bierce picked Toni's picture out of a dozen similar looking women, he seems convinced it's you. And this time a judge _has_ signed off on a warrant to conduct a strip search, and they are going to take photographs."

"How the hell can you let them do this?" Toni asked, "I never raped anybody and all the time that's wasted looking at me is going to give the real attacker plenty of time to either get away, or find her new victim."

"Toni, I'm sorry, but my hands are tied on this," Cragen said.

"Bierce said that the woman who raped him had a mark on her breast," Elliot said, "But he couldn't determine what it was, a birthmark, a mole, a scar…but whatever it is, if you go through with this, once they see you don't have a mark, their case is going to fall apart."

Toni laughed bitterly and replied, "Well it's just that simple is it? And suppose I do, then that makes me look guilty, doesn't it?"

Olivia glanced over at Elliot and it was obvious they hadn't thought about that.

"Do you?" Olivia asked.

"It's nobody's damn business," she said, and looking at Cragen she shook her head and said only, "You…kiss me."

"What?" Cragen asked.

"I said kiss me, when I'm being fucked over I like to be kissed," she said.

"Toni," Elliot started to say, but she cut him off.

"You believe these fruit bats but you won't believe me, when did we cross over into the Twilight Zone?" she asked.

"We have to check it out," Cragen said, "If Bierce was raped, and it's the same person who's responsible for the other attacks, we have to know. I'm just giving you a heads up."

Toni's lips drew back in a sneer and she started to show her teeth.

"We don't like it either, Toni, but at Special Victims we have a motto: we don't pick the vic."

Toni snarled as she replied, "The hell you don't!" and she stormed out of his office and slammed the door behind her. Olivia immediately took off after her and disappeared out of the office.

"You don't seriously believe Toni is responsible, do you?" Munch asked, the first thing he'd said since they entered Cragen's office.

"John, she has to be eliminated before we can look elsewhere," Cragen said.

"We're already gone back and re-interviewed every woman that the other victims knew; in their families, their friends, their coworkers, we can't find any connection. So that means they really are random and they're picked from a distance by their attacker," Elliot said.

Olivia came back into the office and said, "Toni's gone, I couldn't catch her."

"Well she's not driving anywhere, that's a relief," Cragen said.

"So now what do we do?" Olivia asked.

"It's late," Cragen told them, "Everybody go home, get some sleep, we'll start again tomorrow."

"Yeah," Munch murmured as he headed for the door, "If there _is_ a tomorrow."

"What, John?" Cragen asked.

"Nothing."


	8. Chapter 8

Early the next morning, SVU was graced with a visit by Huang, and he looked like hell and it was noticeable.

"What happened to you?" Munch asked, "You stick your keys in an outlet or something?"

George rubbed one eye and said, "I had a very short night, and a very unusual wakeup call."

"What happened?" Elliot asked.

"Toni called me at 4 o' clock this morning," he answered.

"What?" was the general consensus.

"What the hell has been going on around here?" Huang asked, to nobody in particular.

"What did she say?" Olivia asked.

"That she wanted to _kill_ herself," he answered, "I tried to get her to calm down and tell me where she was so I could find her before she did anything drastic, no luck there. I managed to get part of the call recorded before she hung up."

From his pocket he produced a miniature recorder and pressed the play button on it and they heard amidst a garble of static, Toni, sounding distraught and borderline hysterical.

"I'm sorry I called, George, but I needed to talk to somebody."

"It's alright, Toni, what's happened? Where are you?"

"George, they think I did it, they think I raped Mike and those other guys."

"What?"

"Now they're saying there's a fourth guy who can identify me, you know what that means, George? I've got an order, at 10 tomorrow I go back to SVU and take my clothes off so a bunch of fat old pigs can stand around and look at me and take pictures!"

The sound on the phone became very distant as if Toni had held the phone away from her momentarily as she continued, "I want to die, George, I just want to kill myself, I mean it. _Every_ time there's something going on at Special Victims and I'm in the picture, I turn into the scapegoat, what did I ever do to them?"

"Toni, calm down, where are you?"

Toni's voice had become a high pitched string of gibberish that sounded like she was crying. Munch however, was able to decipher something coherent in it and he hoped the others did not.

"I just want to kill myself, George, I can't go through this," Toni said, and then a click as the call disconnected.

"I had the number traced back to find out where she called from," Huang told the detectives, "It was a disposable cell phone that was left in the street at 6th Avenue."

"My God," Olivia said.

Elliot made a quick call to Toni's house and while he did that, Munch turned around and stared at Cragen, who didn't notice it, instead he checked the clock on the wall and said, "It's 10 now, she's not coming in, we have to find her."

"What identification was she talking about?" Huang wanted to know.

"It's a long story, we'll explain on the way," Elliot said as he put his phone away, "Mike Kellerman stayed at the Keller household all night, he said that Toni never came home and Tony doesn't have any idea where she could be. So I say we check the hospital and morgue _first_ to see if she made good on her threat."

"She's been gone 12 hours since we last saw her," Olivia said, "Why did she wait and call Huang at 4 o' clock?"

"She might've gone somewhere to try and sleep for the night," Elliot guessed, "Either that or she just got on a bus and rode aimlessly around all night before deciding to call. There's no telling with her."

"That's what scares me," Olivia said, "I'll be with you in a minute."

Munch went over to Fin and said quietly into his ear, "We'll let them take the morgues, we're going to assume she's still alive and look for her elsewhere."

"Where?" Fin asked.

"I don't know, but on the phone when she was screaming I could hear her saying that she wanted Mike, so we go pick him up and take him with us, she might be more willing to cooperate with him right now than any of us."

Olivia had gone to the ladies room and when she was sure she was alone, she took her cell phone out and dialed a number.

"Hello?"

"Tony," she said, "I just heard about Toni, I am so sorry. We're going to do everything we can to find her, do you know any place she might go or any friends she has?"

There was a brief pause before Tony replied, "She doesn't have any friends, you guys are her friends."

I wouldn't be too sure about that, Olivia thought, but she told him, "We're going to do everything we can to find her."

"I know you will," he said, "I love you, Olivia."

For a second she froze before she finally recovered and responded, "I love you too, Tony."

* * *

Munch and Fin had gone to Tony's house and gotten Mike and explained to him what was going on as they drove back to the precinct to check on the off chance Toni might come in before they looked elsewhere.

"You're sure she never called you last night or dropped in for a minute?" Munch asked.

Mike shook his head, "I would've remembered. You really think she'd kill herself?"

"She tried once before," John said.

"She's got more at stake now," Fin reminded him, "So it's a safe bet she's still alive."

"So where do we look?" Mike asked.

"I've got an idea," Munch said, and he turned to Fin and said, "When you were a kid and cut school, where did you go?"

"I never cut school," Fin told him.

Munch did a double take, "You cannot be serious."

Mike leaned over from the backseat and asked, "What're you thinking, John?"

"Oh right, I guess that _would_ be before both your times. Well, when I was a kid, if you didn't go to school and there was no clearance that you were home sick and about to croak, the schools sent out truant officers to catch the kids and drag them in. They'd go by the homes and the movie theater, the park, _any_ place they thought kids would go when they were ditching school."

"So what'd they do to you when you got caught?" Fin asked.

Munch laughed and told him, "I _never_ got caught."

"Oh yeah, how come?" Mike asked.

"Because I went to the one place they'd _never_ look, and that might be where Toni is now," Munch said.

"Where's that?" Fin asked.

"The library."

Now it was Fin's turn to do a double take as he asked, "Are _you_ serious?"

"It makes sense," Mike commented, "But which one? The New York Public Library?"

"Too obvious," Munch shook his head, "We'll have to search all the secondary ones."

"Are you nuts?" Fin asked, "You know how many libraries there are in this area alone?"

"No but we're going to find out," Munch told him.

Fin rolled his eyes and said, "Man you _are_ nuts."

Munch looked over at him and said, "Yes, but you love me anyway."

* * *

After a while all the libraries started to look alike for the men. They had checked out 10 of them already and not found anything, but with three of them working together they were able to determine a lot sooner if Toni was or wasn't around; so once again they took off in different directions and kept their eyes peeled for the young woman.

"Toni," Munch whispered as he rounded one corner, "Toni, are you here?"

"Toni?" Fin likewise whispered. As he turned a corner, he caught sight of a young woman and grabbed her but when she turned around he saw it wasn't Toni. "Sorry," he said, and moved on.

"John!" Mike whispered from another section, and that brought the other two up, "Look!"

They saw Toni at the back of the library in the literature section; her back was to them and she didn't appear to notice their presence. The three acted like a football team in a huddle and decided what the best action to take was; as quietly as possible, they sneaked up on her and grabbed her. Munch threw his arm over her mouth so she couldn't scream and when she saw it was them, she made a muffled noise of discontent though she didn't put up much struggle with them. They held onto her and moved towards the exit when they realized how ridiculous they looked and how easily they were drawing attention to themselves, so Munch told the others to shift direction and head for the ladies room, and he told them that he'd handle this himself and pulled her in behind him. Mike and Fin stood at the entrance and waited for a minute, half expecting to hear some woman scream followed by a loud slap and Munch being shoved out with his hand over his eye.

Inside the ladies room, Toni and Munch had moved away from the door and over towards the sinks, John tried to talk sense into her but she wasn't up for listening to him.

"Look Toni, I know that you didn't have anything to do with what happened to Mike or any of those other men," he told her.

"Yeah but it doesn't matter what you or anybody else knows because as long as this guy says I did it, then everybody's going to believe him. And even if this strip search reveals I _don't_ have a mark on me, I still get the privilege of standing around catching cold in my birthday suit while a bunch of perverts wearing badges get off on seeing me exposed."

"Toni, I am sorry," Munch told her, "But we've run out of options. Now if you don't come back willingly, they're going to take out another warrant to have you forcibly returned for it."

"John, I can't do it!" Toni said, "I've been exploited all my life and I've dealt with it every time up till now, I just can't do it anymore!"

"I know," he said sympathetically, "And I'm going to do everything I can to help you and to make this as quick and painless for you as possible."

"Thanks, John," she said as she looked down to the floor, "But I know your hands are tied just as much as everyone else's are."

Munch tried to think of some way they could get her out of this but he was coming up empty, all he could do was offer her an empty promise of, "It's going to be alright, Toni." Then he thought of something else and added, "If it'll make you feel any better, I'll stay in the room the whole time, and if I so much as hear _one_ wolf call or _one_ note of a burlesque song, I'll beat the son of a bitch's brains out with an ash tray, okay?"

That made her laugh, albeit weakly, and she said, "Okay, John."

They left the restroom and Toni walked straight over to Mike and threw her arms around him and talked to him too quietly to be understood by the detectives. Fin looked at Munch who refused to say anything about it and only shook his head. The four walked out and got in Fin's car, with Toni and Mike riding in the back, and they started driving back to the precinct, when on the way, Fin's cell phone rang.

"I'll get it," Munch said as he took it and put it on speaker, "Hello."

"John," it was Olivia's voice, "Have you guys found Toni yet?"

"Yeah we got her," Munch answered, "We're on our way back now."

"Well don't!" Olivia told him.

"What?" they asked.

"What's going on?" John asked.

"Don't bring her back yet," Olivia said, "We need you guys to stall and keep her away until further notice."

"Why, what's going on?" Fin wanted to know.

"We need you to keep her gone to hold off the strip search, we need time to find something."

"Find what?" Toni asked as she leaned over to the front seat, "What the hell's going on?"

Olivia replied, "We've just latched onto something regarding the three cops who gave the initial report of the last rape victim; it seems that the unis got their orders from a different source but we need time to track it down."

"How long?" Fin asked.

"A day maybe, or more," Olivia said, "You think you can handle that?"

"Consider her the invisible woman," Munch told her, and disconnected the call.

"So now what do we do?" Toni asked.

"Anybody feel like getting a pizza for lunch?" Munch asked.

"That's not going to buy us enough time," Mike said.

"I know, but everybody says Chicago has the best pizza, so I figured we'd go out there and try it to see if it's false advertising or not," Munch replied.

Toni fell back against the seat laughing.

* * *

Munch had made the suggestion that since Fin's driving was like 4 hours on a Tilt-A-Whirl anyway, they might as well go to Coney Island to enjoy the real rides. Fin had rolled his eyes at that comment but after driving around for two hours while trying to stay out of sight of any other police, they found themselves heading out there anyway and decided getting lost in the crowds might be a Godsend for them. Munch and Fin stuck close together but Toni had managed to talk Mike into going on the roller coasters with her and off they went. Fin gestured towards them as they disappeared in a crowd and asked Munch, "What's going on with them?"

"What're you talking about?" Munch asked.

"You know damn well what I'm talking about," Fin replied, "Whatever's going on with those two, if the defense finds out about it, it's going to jeopardize the whole case."

"I don't see it that way," Munch replied, "I think it further proves Toni's innocence, why _would_ any man get involved with the woman who raped him?"

"Mike didn't see his attacker," Fin reminded him.

"No but they're going to insinuate she's the same one who attacked all four guys," John told him, "And you know how those cases work, if they fail to prove that _one_ is connected to the others then the whole case goes out the window. Look, I don't know what's going on with them, I don't necessarily like it either but Toni is old enough to do anything she wants and that includes sleeping with my ex-partner if she sees fit. We can't do anything about it."

"Right," Fin said, "Just don't let Elliot catch wind of it."

"Oh absolutely," Munch agreed, "He's not old enough to know about this. But you know it's kind of funny, Toni's last name is Keller, Mike's is Kellerman, if they would get married someday she wouldn't have far to go to change her name."

* * *

When night came, they found a motel in a section of New York where they were not likely to be recognized and got four vacant rooms to spend the night. It was an older place that could've easily passed itself off as the Bates motel, 12 rooms all in a ground floor row, no upstairs to the place. Just to make sure they had all their bases covered, Fin took one on one end, Munch took the one on the other end, and Mike and Toni took the rooms in between. Toni had gotten the room between Mike and John and she considered it a very interesting position to be in. She never turned on the TV and she didn't turn on the lights; she just stood in her room in the dark, listening to the wall, trying to hear if anything was going on in Munch's room. All seemed quiet but she decided against trying anything just yet, instead she stayed where she was and waited. It got darker outside and silence surrounded her, apparently everybody had had the same idea of turning in for the night and just going to bed.

How long did she stand there next to the wall, waiting for the right moment to act? Half an hour maybe? Definitely not an hour, she couldn't wait around that long. Finally when she was about to go crazy from the silence, she decided it was a good enough time as any. She unlocked her door and stepped outside, she thought that she'd been quiet enough but apparently not because the door to cabin #4 had opened and she saw Fin take a step out when he realized it was her.

They looked at each other for a few seconds and each waited for the other to move first, finally Toni broke the silence by clearing her throat and asking, "Going somewhere, Columbo?"

One thing about Fin that would've made him a good sociopath, he was never at a loss for words, he always had an answer ready to go, and his answer to that was he thought that he'd heard something. To be sure, Toni thought, but it wasn't what he thought. Fin didn't even bother asking what she was doing out, instead he returned to his room and closed the door again. Toni almost laughed, but once he was gone and she was sure he wasn't looking out the window, she went back to the front desk and got a different room for the night; cabin #12, at the far end of the motel, that had to be more private than the room she already had. With her new key, she returned to the motel and quietly rapped on Mike's door and when he opened; apparently much quieter than she was able to because nobody came looking this time, she had him follow her to her new room where they wouldn't be disturbed for the rest of the night.

Once they were together, and alone, Toni wrestled Mike onto the bed and climbed on top of him.

"Seems to me we tried this move once before," he said, "And it didn't work."

"I know," she told him, "I'm hoping this time we can pick up where we left off."

She groped him a bit and tried to kiss him but she felt his body go stiff under her. "What is it?" she asked.

He looked up at her and said, "I just can't get over how young you are."

She rolled her eyes, "Oh not that again."

"You seem a little young to be so sure of yourself," Mike said.

"You were my age once, do you remember back then?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, "And if memory serves I was probably a lot like you, but I'll tell you my life hasn't been any dream."

"Neither has mine," she told him, "Believe me, I know what a rotten life is when I see one." She nuzzled her face against his and said, "I think we could both use a new start, and each with someone we can rely on."

Mike smiled but not because he agreed necessarily, he took her hand in his and kissed it and said, "I think you'd be better off starting again with someone your own age. I trust you know your math, you get involved with someone so many years older than yourself, and you're bound to wind up alone again prematurely."

"I don't care," Toni said, "I don't care about tomorrow or the next day or the next year, you see, Mike, the future is no good for me, because I don't plan to be here for it."

Mike looked up at her somberly and he could see something in her eyes, something that he could only identify as pain and fear and desperation. She knew that her shield had been cracked through and she rolled off of him and moved to the end of the bed and sat on her knees and looked at him.

"I _hate_ needing anything from anyone," she said, "All my life I've never been able to rely on anybody for help, I looked out for myself because I was the only person that would…and now…" her voice was choked and even in the dark he could see the tears building up in her eyes, but at this very moment she was too angry to be upset, "Sometimes I wish I'd killed myself in Bellevue when I had the chance! Then I wouldn't have to be going through _any_ of this now! I wouldn't have to be stabbed in the back by the people that I called my friends! The people I trusted, and they do this to me! I've always known never to count on anybody for any kind of help, but I can't do that anymore! As much as I hate it, I need something, Mike, I need you, you're the only thing that can take me back from the ledge, because I'm about ready to jump off!"

He had barely moved from where she'd pinned him but before he could get up she had lunged and was on him again, desperate for him to understand. "You're the only person I can tell this to, Mike, because I've got the least at stake with you, I hardly know you, and I know that when this is all over you're going to go back to Baltimore and forget all about me and I'm going to be alone again, I accept that! But you're here now, and I can't accept being alone when I have a choice not to be." She sat back on her heels and tried to breathe, Mike could hear her crying now as she said, "We're alike more than either of us is willing to realize you know." She looked at him and told him, "I've tried the taste of gun metal myself, it's not something I'd care to try again either."

Nothing could've prepared him for that statement, the only thing he could think of when he'd heard it was, "When?"

"It was a while ago," she told him, "My father was out of town and I was going stir crazy in the house, so I went outside at 10 o' clock at night and just started walking, and I realized I'd wound up at Munch's apartment. I'd gotten him up and made up a story about having a fight with my dad and storming out, he let me crash on his couch for the night. He was in the shower and his gun was just lying on the dresser by the bed. I opened it up and saw it was loaded, and I put the muzzle in my mouth. The metal itself didn't taste much different than sticking a fork in your mouth. It had been fired recently, I could taste the gun oil and the powder. You probably weren't aware of it when you tried it with your own gun, but when you stick somebody's gun in your mouth, it's a very personal thing, you can feel their aura surrounding it and before you pull the trigger you're feeding off the essence of their life energy and you feel _their_ life…as weird as it sounds, it was a high privilege to have that experience using his service revolver instead of somebody else's, it's a very intimate experience that…when it's over, it's gone forever, never again, and you realize just how much of a privilege it was."

She was notably calmer now as she settled down on the bed again and added, "I suppose that it's an experience comparable to…if you had one night to join in with a friend and their lover, when dawn comes the next day it's over and you'll never have that experience again so you revel in what you had for that brief period." She tried to smile and told him, "My memory is so corroded, I can't even tell now if I'm speaking from experience on that…I mean I never wanted to be involved with one person most of the time, let alone two, but I really can't say what did and didn't happen with or without my consent. I only have little pieces of memories of waking up in piles of bodies, always somebody different on top of me, men, women, it didn't matter…I never wanted to be there but that was how I survived, some survival. So you see why I couldn't tell this to anyone else, for one thing, John would never get over it, he'd spend the rest of his days wracked with guilt on how I almost killed myself using his gun. And for another, it's never a good idea to tell things like this to anybody who has an FBI shrink on speed dial, I'd never get out of the rubber room if I told any of them what I've just told you."

Mike knew it was the wrong thing to ask and probably the dumbest thing he could ask but he had to know, "Why didn't you pull the trigger?"

She shrugged and said, "I hate the noise. Besides, John already found his father with his brains blown out, of his own doing, I wasn't about to let him find me the same way. And, we Kellers never kill anybody with a gun, we use our hands, and I apply the same logic to suicide, if I was really going to kill myself, I would not use a gun, too messy."

"And a knife's not messy?"

"Not as messy," she said, and laughed, "Elliot…when I tried to kill myself the first time, he couldn't handle it…I told you he's Catholic, and you know what that means. He read me the riot act about where his church stands on suicide…they call it a Cardinal sin…of course you know what my response to that was, don't you? So what, who cares? I don't care, I'm not a Cardinal, I'm not even a bishop, I don't even like to wear red." She tried to laugh but couldn't get it out, "I'm really screwed up, Mike, I know it, and I think it only gets worse as I get older. Sometimes I really wish I had it in me to just end it all."

"Like last night?" he asked.

"George told you?" she asked, "Figures…doctor patient confidentiality my ass."

"Where _were_ you last night?" Mike asked.

"After I left Special Victims?" she asked, "Nowhere in particular, just walked around and tried to think."

"Why'd you wait until 4 in the morning to call him?" he asked.

"Around 3 o' clock, I got tired, and I couldn't think straight, I wanted to go to sleep, didn't know _where_ to go, didn't want to go home, didn't want to find a motel for the night, I wanted to talk to somebody, so I just called Huang, he'd given me his number the last time I saw him incase I ever _did_ need to talk to someone. It made perfect sense at the time; he was the only one who _didn't_ know that I've been hung out to dry by the SVU squad. I don't even know what it was I _planned_ to tell him but _everything_ just came scrambling out as soon as he answered, I didn't know where to start or to stop. I never got to sleep, I just walked around all night and this morning tried to put as much distance between me and everyone else, and tried to hide out where they wouldn't find me."

She felt Mike's arm behind her back and she turned on her side and leaned into him, "I've been able to endure so much crap in my life, but I really don't think I can take much more of this. Everybody has a limit before they just _snap_."

* * *

Early the next morning, Munch got up and realized he was the first one to, and when he found out that neither Toni or Mike were answering their doors, he went to the front desk and found out that Toni had swapped her room for another, and he had a good idea that killed two birds with one stone. He got the spare key for room 12 and went out to the end of the motel. First he put his ear to the door to make sure he wasn't going to be walking in on them at a vulnerable moment, all was quiet inside, so he put the key in the lock and opened the door.

Though the sun was starting to come up, the room was still dark but he could see Mike and Toni asleep in bed, her lying on top of him; they were both wrapped up in the covers but John could see Toni was also wrapped up in a towel from the bathroom but that seemed to be about it. Munch was taken aback by this sight, though he'd had his suspicions, thinking something was true and seeing it for yourself were two different things. And yet, what did he know? He wasn't about to go in and pull back the sheets to find out. He reminded himself that it wasn't any of his business, and yet in some way he knew it was, she was his friend and he was his ex-partner; and he still held some belief in his statement that he was a curse to all his partners. Oh true he hadn't been involved in the Mahoney shooting, he wished he was though, but all the same he couldn't shake the feeling that he was somehow responsible for Mike being thrown to the wolves.

He finally had the presence of mind to know where he wasn't wanted, and it was at that time it also occurred to him that whatever was going on between these two might be the best thing for them. Both had been royally screwed over in life and deserved something better, as well as _someone_ that they could each turn to.

"Mazel tov, you two," he said quietly as he backed out of the room and closed the door behind him.

He went back to room #4 and knocked on Fin's door, he answered it looking half asleep and mad as hell for being awoken.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Checkout time's noon, right?" Munch asked.

"So what?"

"I just checked on Heckle and Jeckle and they're both asleep, I say until we get the heads up from Olivia or Elliot that we stay out of sight, and for the time being I think we could all stay here for a few more hours and finally get some rest."

"Sounds good to me," Fin said, and closed the door almost in John's face.

"Goodnight to you too, you angry mudsucker," Munch murmured under his breath as he headed back to his own room.


	9. Chapter 9

Author's Note: I apologize for the long delay, but this story got away from me for a while, I'm hoping now to get back on track with it and get it finished. Thanks to the readers who have stuck with it and continue to check out the new chapters.

Mike and Toni woke up around 9 o' clock, they stayed in bed for a while talking to each other, then, reluctantly, they got up and got dressed. Toni remade the bed and they decided to face the music, and the two cops who by now were probably outside waiting for them. Toni went first so she'd be the one hit by the questions and the ridicule instead of Mike, but when she went outside she was surprised to see nobody was there. She went over to Munch's door and knocked, and in a moment he answered, without his glasses, and looking half asleep.

"So what's the plan?" she asked, "Is there any word from Olivia yet?"

"Nothing yet, Toni, we're just going to lay low until we get the order from them," he said, then he reached out and grabbed her by the arm and tried to persuade her to come in, "I want to have a word with you."

She went in and Munch shut the door behind them. His room was also dark and his bed hadn't been made yet, it looked like he'd just gotten up as well.

"Look Toni, even though it's none of my business…I know that Mike spent the night with you last night."

"And?" she asked.

"I know it's none of my business, but you're my friend and he was my partner so I feel involved, and maybe responsible as well."

"You're not responsible for me, John," Toni said.

"Yeah I am," he replied, "Until we get you back home you're under our protection, so until we get back to Manhattan I _am_ responsible for you, whether you like it or not, or for that matter whether _I_ like it or not."

"So what's your point?" she asked.

"I guess my problem is I'm like Elliot, I have a problem seeing you as an adult, I know you are one but I have trouble realizing it, I still see you as the kid that wandered into our squad four years ago. And when I see you with a guy twice your age, even if he _was_ my partner…"

"Oh John, don't start," Toni said, rolling her eyes, "Don't start with that."

"I know," he said, putting his hands up defensively, "It's none of my business, and maybe it'd be better for both of you in the long run, you could both certainly do worse."

"John you're really making me feel bad," she told him somewhat cynically.

"Why?" Then it occurred to him, "You two conked out again?"

"I tell you John," she said, "If we actually ever get to the sexual part of a relationship it's going to be a bloody miracle."

"Hmmm," he said as he put his glasses on, "Then I guess my 'Mazel tov' was a little premature. I could try giving you a few pointers but you can guess when the last time I had sex was, right?"

Toni laughed.

"Go get Mike, I'll see if Fin's up and we can go get something to eat," he told her.

* * *

Once noon came and there still wasn't any word from their partners back at SVU, Munch spoke to the motel manager and got another night on their rooms. They went to lunch at a diner nearby, and when it was just Munch and Toni at the table, she asked him, "What're we going to do if Elliot and Olivia can't find anything?"

"We'll just cross that bridge when we come to it," he told her, "But I think they're going to come up with _something_ we can use in our favor, they usually do."

"I just can't stand the thought of having to go back there and put up with those _stupid_ people," Toni said.

"Well how do you think _I_ feel?" Munch asked, "I have to work with them every day."

Toni made a discontented noise in her throat and hit her head against the table.

"John, how're we ever going to catch this crazy bitch?" she asked.

"What's this 'we'?" he asked, "Are you a partner now?"

"You know what I mean," she said, "There are 20 million women in New York, how're we going to find out which one it is?"

"Well, catching perps is never easy," he admitted, "But we usually find a way to do it, it's just a matter of time."

"Yeah, in the meantime all we can do is sit by and wait for another redhead to come up sodomized," Toni told him.

"Unfortunately Fin's right," Munch replied, "We can hardly put out an APB telling all guys with red hair to watch out for a psycho woman the next time they try to get lucky."

"Munch, there just has to be some way that we can warn people," Toni said, "There's just got to."

Munch reached over and patted her on the head and responded, "I wish there was, kid."

"There's _got_ to be a way," Toni said quietly.

* * *

"You know," Mike told Munch late that afternoon as he looked out the window in his cabin, "This place reminds me of a homicide Lewis and I worked at a motel once."

"You told me," Munch replied, "You got lucky with a hooker, big whoop."

Mike waved him off and said, "What a night that was, trying to find out who killed one guy, we wound up getting acquainted with all the residents of that place, a family of immigrants, a set of parents moving around from place to place, lots of interesting stories."

"Yeah really charming bunch," Munch said dryly, "And then the next day you went to Meldrick's old neighborhood to see his old building get blown up in 10 seconds. I've heard it all before, Mike."

"Alright, so let's talk about something new, what's new with you?" Mike replied sarcastically.

"Nothing you'd be interested in hearing about most likely," Munch agreed, "You know every single case manages to be individual and yet after a while all the sickness just seems to blur together."

"Hey John," Mike said, "Isn't it usually only two years that cops work sex crimes?"

"On average yes," Munch answered, "I know, I've been there a hell of a lot longer than that, but I _refuse_ to transfer back to homicide."

"Why not?" Mike asked, "Victims can't talk."

"Their bodies can," he replied, "They can tell whole stories about what was done to them, sometimes they say it louder than a living vic can."

"Speaking of which," Mike said, "What exactly is Toni's story?"

"A long, sad and sordid one," Munch told him, "I'd tell you about it but I think you already tried eating your gun one time too many."

Mike recalled what Toni had told him the other night about trying the same thing with Munch's gun when he wasn't looking, and he decided to change the subject, but John beat him to it.

"Speaking of which, where is she?" he asked.

"She said she had to go make a phone call," Mike answered.

Munch gestured to the phone in the room and asked, "Why didn't she just do it here? The phone _does_ work."

"She said it was private," Mike told him.

"Yeah, well for her, something ought to be," Munch said.

"Hey John," Mike said, "When do you think your partners are going to find out anything?"

"Who knows?" Munch replied, "When it's four of us running down all possibilities we can usually make good time, but with two of us out here playing hide and seek with the unis, there's no telling."

"I hope they can find whatever it is they're looking for, and soon," Mike told him, "This is getting ridiculous."

"I know it," Munch said, "I feel like we're just waiting for somebody to stick a big bull's eye on our backs when we step outside of this place."

* * *

They watched as it got dark, a short while later Fin came into the room and said that he'd just gotten off the phone with Cragen and there wasn't any update that could be of any help to them as of that time.

"It's not too late to go to Chicago," Munch told Fin, "You know eventually a judge is going to sign off the warrant for the manhunt and they're going to comb every place in New York for Toni."

"You kidding me?" Fin replied, "Nobody takes this stuff seriously to begin with."

"Maybe not but there's _always_ a hardass gas bag out there ready to make an example out of someone and you can be sure somebody in the justice system is just dying to make an example out of Toni," Munch said, "She's had enough experience _in_ the system that she could have plenty of enemies there. Besides, if nobody was taking this case seriously, there wouldn't be a warrant compelling her to consent to a strip search in the first place, and we wouldn't be out here waiting for further word from Elliot and Olivia."

"Hey John," Mike called from where he stood gazing out the window, "Didn't that last guy say that he woke up in a motel room during his attack?"

"Something like that, I think, why?" Munch asked.

Mike pointed out the window and said, "I can see two people down at the end cabin, it doesn't look like they're very close but in the outside light I can see the dude's got red hair, and the woman's going in ahead of him."

Munch and Fin looked at each other and considered what they were going to do.

"We could be wrong," Munch reminded him.

"And if we ain't?" Fin replied.

"Just so we're clear," Munch told him, "Let's go."

They grabbed their guns and were out the door, they went down to cabin #1 and Fin beat on the door a couple of times and waited impatiently to see if anybody answered. Somebody did, a redhead man who looked to be somewhere in his mid 20's, and he looked very surprised by their presence.

"What's going on?" he asked cluelessly.

"Police, where's the woman you came in with?" Fin asked.

"In the bathroom, but what's this about?" the man asked.

Fin stormed past him and went over to the bathroom door and said, "Police, come on out and don't try anything stupid, lady."

Behind the door he could hear somebody grumbling something and as the door opened, he felt his stomach drop out.

"Boy you _really_ know just when to show up, don't you?" Toni asked.

* * *

"I feel like I'm in that joke about the cop who finds out the hooker he's about to have sex with is his own teen daughter," Munch told Toni once the initial commotion had died down, "What the hell is going on around here?"

Toni groaned and ran her hand over her face, looking embarrassed out of her mind but not necessarily for herself. She told the man she'd come in with, "Well Ricky, these are the cops I was telling you about, that's John Munch and that's Odafin Tutuola…" she pointed to the man beside her and said, "This is Ricky Vincenzo, I guess you could say he's a friend from the old neighborhood."

"What neighborhood is that?" Munch asked.

"It's a long story," Toni told him.

"Well nobody's going anywhere," he replied, "We've got plenty of time."

At that moment his cell phone started ringing, he told her, "Don't move!" and went off to a corner of the room to answer, "Detective Munch speaking."

"John," Olivia sounded relieved to hear his voice, "How's Toni doing?"

"Well that remains to be seen," Munch told her.

"What?"

"Fin and I just busted her in a motel room with another redhead, now I'm sure that she's got a perfectly logical explanation for it, but we haven't gotten to it yet."

"Yeah well I think we can top that one," Olivia told him, "We just had another redhead man come in, apparently Toni called him earlier and told him what's going on."

"What's he say?" John asked.

"He stormed into the squad room screaming about she couldn't have done it," Olivia said.

"Well this ought to be a very interesting interrogation," Munch replied.

"I'll say," she agreed.

John hung up and told Toni, "I don't want to talk to you right now, go back to your cabin and stay there with Mike."

"_John_," she said threateningly, "Let me explain."

"I will, _after_ we get done grilling your friend," he told her as he gave her a shove towards the door, "Go on."

Toni went back and saw Mike standing at the doorway waiting for her.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"You try and warn people, and this is the thanks you get," she told him bitterly as she stormed past him into the cabin, "Nobody wants to listen to me."

"Alright," Mike told her as he closed the door behind them, "So explain it to me, you know I'll listen."

* * *

"Alright, David," Olivia said as she set three cups of coffee on the table in the interview room, "Now why don't you try telling us your story again so we can actually get it this time?"

David Tompkins was also a man in his mid 20s with bright red hair and that insecure, naïve look that Toni had mentioned as being more her type when it came to attraction. Right now he looked about as comfortable as a frog on a hotplate by being in the spotlight here, but he got past that and told them, "You guys got it all wrong about Toni, she'd never hurt anyone."

"Well I wouldn't say that," Elliot said, "She went to Bellevue after killing a man in the courthouse."

David nodded, "Yeah, I saw that in the papers, but I mean she wouldn't rape anybody, I know she wouldn't."

"Alright," Olivia said, "How do you know?"

He looked at the two of them with a hopeless look in his eyes and he said with a shake of his head, "If you knew her like I do, you wouldn't have to ask."

"Right, _how_ do you know Toni?" Elliot asked, "I think I missed that."

"A few years ago we were living together," he answered, "I take it that she's told you a bit about that part of her life."

Elliot nodded.

"Yeah well…" David said a bit dismissively, "You know the jokes everybody has about people like that…revolving door, like a doorknob, everybody gets a turn…well it wasn't like that with Toni, I mean yeah she slept with a lot of people, but it wasn't like she was hooking or anything."

"So you were sleeping with her?" Elliot asked.

"Yeah…a few times," he answered, "Kind of."

"What do you mean kind of?" Olivia asked.

* * *

"I looked up a few guys that I used to know when I was younger," Toni explained to Mike, "Remember I told you that I particularly go for the redheads? Well I decided they deserved to know what was going on, so they could be careful. One of them was Ricky, the guy Fin and Munch are interrogating down at the end…another one was a guy named David Tompkins…he said something about going to talk to the detectives at SVU personally, though I doubt it'll help."

"How long's it been since you've seen them?" Mike asked.

"A few years," she answered, "I guess I was 16 the last time I saw them."

"But you're still in touch?"

"Well…" Toni looked to the floor, "They were good guys, they always said if I ever needed help, I could call on them, thank God they never changed their numbers."

"Alright, so what were these guys to you?" Mike asked her, trying not to push the subject.

"Survival," Toni answered, "That's all any of them were…the sex, any of it, all of it, that's all it was ever about." She caught the look on his face and explained, "Oh of course, they weren't _all_ just people I slept with. Some of them were exceptions, and there were other reasons I hung around, a different form of survival."

* * *

"Toni and I never slept together," Ricky told Fin and Munch in the semi-privacy of his motel room, "Look, I know her history, I know she slept with a lot of people, but I wasn't one of them."

"Right, so why'd she meet you in your motel room?" Fin asked.

"Toni called me," he said, "Said that we had to talk, that it had to be somewhere private…she told me where she was and I told her I was going to get a room here so we could be alone."

"Oh sure that sounds totally platonic," Munch sarcastically replied.

"It is," Ricky insisted, "I never slept with her."

"So how do you know her then?" Fin asked.

"I was from that neighborhood at that time," he said, "We knew each other, she stayed with me for a while after she left another guy, but I never did anything."

"A good Samaritan in a city of dragons, why do I find that hard to believe?" Munch asked.

"I didn't say that," Ricky told him, "Toni helped me."

"With what?"

He looked up at Munch and explained, "I'm an artist, I had Toni model for me a few times, I was able to sell her pictures when I needed to make the rent."

Munch suddenly felt a bit of nausea building up in his stomach, "What kind of modeling?"

Ricky reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper and said, "This was the rough draft from the first time. I made a larger one on canvas to sell." Munch took it, unfolded it and he and Fin both got an eyeful. On the paper was a sketch of Toni laid out on a couch posed suggestively with a towel loosely draped over her vital areas.

"Well she's not _exactly_ naked," Munch said, "But the towel _does_ leave little to the imagination. Alright Picasso, let me ask you a question, how old was Toni when she modeled for you?"

"She was fifteen," Ricky answered.

"And how old were you?" Fin asked.

"Eighteen."

"Guess what, that's called illegal," Munch told him as he put the drawing in his pocket.

"I told you," Ricky said, "I never did anything, she volunteered."

"I find that a little hard to believe," Munch said.

"Yeah? Well you can ask her, you'll see," Ricky told him, "She helped me, so I helped her when I could, but she didn't stay with me long. That was around the time she moved in with a guy named David Tompkins."

"How do you remember him?" Fin asked.

* * *

"Sure, David and I slept together a few times," Toni told Mike, "But it wasn't really much personal…"

"Was it ever?" Mike asked.

"Not really, but it _really_ wasn't personal with him…see he had better screws than me to land. I was just sort of a live-in last resort for a while...well that's not exactly the right way to put it...it was more innocent than I can make it sound. You see...David plays both teams, but he really prefers guys," Toni explained, "I always found that a bit of a relief, knowing that I really wasn't much his type."

"I see," Mike said, feeling too far gone to be shocked by anything anymore.

"And in truth, I'm not sure you could call what we did _sleeping together_," Toni added, and started gesturing with her hands as she tried to continue, "Let's see, how do I put this? I'm a very simplistic person when it comes to sex, you know? No oral, no anal, no whips, chains, anything like that, just plain sex, but we didn't even do that. I'll say this much for him, he was very good with his hands."

Mike put his imagination to good use and said, "I think I know what you're getting at."

"Yeah well…" Toni said, "His bed tended to get crowded anyway so it didn't really matter much to me anyway. See whenever he'd meet a new guy, he wouldn't go over to their place, they'd always come over to his, believe it or not he actually had the better apartment of them all."

"And where would you be when that happened?" Mike asked.

* * *

David laughed dryly as he recalled, "My apartment was a real dump, of course in that building we were living in, none of them were great…you walk in and you've pretty much got the living room and bedroom all in one crammed space."

"So if Toni was living with you, what happened when you had," Elliot cleared his throat, "Company over for the night?"

"That was during the winter, it was too cold to go out anywhere, and there wasn't anything to go out for anyway…she just hung around the apartment," David answered.

Olivia made a noise and said, "I'll bet that was awkward for her, listening to you and your boyfriend go at it all night."

"Try watching," David replied.

Olivia's eyes popped wide open and she asked in disbelief, "She watched you two having sex?"

"What can I say?" he asked, "I guess once you've been through what we had you just don't think much of it anymore."

"What you'd _both_ been through?" Elliot asked.

"Toni said that she told you guys about what happened to her as a kid, how she was whored out by those people that were supposed to be taking care of her, unfortunately that's something I can understand only too well," David explained, "But…I guess I bounced back from it better than she did."

"Why do you say that?" Elliot asked.

"Because any time we _were_ together, Toni would just lay there."

"Like a corpse," Olivia said.

"She always had this 'why me?' look on her face, like she was being punished for something. Well," David laughed nervously, "I prefer people who actually act alive in bed…I guess she was curious and that's why she watched, I don't know what she got out of it, but Nick never seemed to mind too much…see he was…"

"Yeah, we get it," Elliot told him.

"Well _don't_ you get it?" David asked, "Toni knows what it's like to be raped, why would she turn around and do it to somebody else?"

"It's not unheard of," Elliot said, "Every abuser has a history of being abused themselves, but not everybody who was abused becomes an abuser."

"Well not Toni, I don't believe that," David told him.

"Why?" Olivia asked, "Did something happen between you?"

"Yeah I guess you could say that," David replied, "You see, Nick was never big with the girls, he didn't particularly like being with them; me, I like girls, I like guys, don't make much difference to me, sure I was promiscuous, we all were at that time, but I never ran around on anybody either, I didn't go for that. I'd say Toni was the same way, except she didn't like anybody, she just slept with them because she felt she had to."

"Including you?" Elliot asked, a hint of accusation in his tone.

"Toni didn't like it but she knew she had a choice, if she _really_ didn't want to do it, at all, then I doubt she would've," David said.

"And what makes you so sure about that?" Elliot inquired.

"Because one time when we were at a party in a friend's apartment," David answered, "Some guy wouldn't quit trying to pin her down when she told him to stop, so she picked up the poker from the fireplace and stabbed him with it, not bad but just enough to stun him so she could get away. We got her out of there and went back to our place, it took a couple of days before she really calmed down. There _is_ a difference in just not wanting to be with who you're with, and being raped."

"You know, David," Olivia said, "Maybe it's just me but I really can't see how it could've been too convenient having Toni with you when you were trying to have a relationship with someone else."

"Well she understood…we may have had the electricity on in the place, but that was about the only way we stayed warm at night. And it's not that difficult having someone else around," he replied, "Especially if a person's open minded."

Elliot felt one eyebrow raising and he asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

David looked too far gone to feel any embarrassment as he explained, "Well once Nick finally got used to having an audience when we were in bed, I made the suggestion that the next time, we let her join us."

Olivia caught the shocked look on Elliot's face at this revelation and she almost laughed. It may have been their job to find out details like this but this was definitely crossing the line into the realm of 'too much information'.

"What?" Elliot managed to ask.

"Nothing like what you're thinking," David remarked, "I personally believe that sex ought to be one of the most enjoyable things in a person's life…but to watch Toni during it, you'd think she was being tortured, and always the same way, flat on her back, never moving, never making a sound, borderline petrified. So I figured, put her in a position on top, let her call some of the shots for a change, and if she didn't like it, she could quit at any time, nobody was forcing her to do anything."

Olivia shook her head, "That doesn't strike me as something that she would do."

"Probably not," David replied, "She didn't say anything when I suggested it, but then again she didn't talk much back then. See Toni…the people who paid for her would always put her through a rigmarole, like they were buying a prize pig or something, putting their hands on her to see if she was too fat or built too big for their liking, so she was very self conscious." He laughed sadly as he recalled, "She always said that was what made watching us in bed so appealing, because who wouldn't like watching two nicely built guys?"

Elliot suddenly felt his gag reflex being tested and he cleared his throat again.

Olivia took it upon herself to comment, "You look a little small to me."

"Yeah well, that's the way Toni always liked guys," David explained, "If you're not built huge, then you can't do as much damage she figured. Survival was always the first thing on her mind and she figured if the guy wasn't built too big, she had a better chance of fighting back if things turned ugly. Anyway, I think she was more horrified at taking her clothes off than anything, she was nervous so we all had a couple of drinks to loosen up."

"And what, things just got out of hand?" Elliot asked.

"No," David shook his head, "Nick was uncomfortable with it but he was a good sport…for her own part it wasn't much, she just sat next to us on the bed for the most part, she'd hardly even put her hand on him. Don't you get it? What is it you cops are always saying? Rape isn't about sex, it's about power…and she didn't want it, or she would've been in a good position for taking it."

* * *

"I'll tell you, Mike, I've certainly had _worse_ offers," Toni told him, "David was nice, Nick was too…they tried to make it a painless experience, we all had a few drinks of tequila before we started and, they turned down the lights so it wouldn't be so bad. You know, I can understand the thinking behind a threesome, but to me they've never really made much sense, never been very practical, you know? Seems to me that only two of the three people are really getting in on the action and the third one's just there for a little extra groping, unless everybody insists on taking a turn, which that was _not_."

"And that's where you came in?" Mike asked.

"Well…if I'd been willing we would've done a lot more, but," she shook her head, "I just couldn't get into it. It's always awkward to say the least when there's a third person involved…if it had just been me and David, it probably would've been alright, but you know? You just get the feeling that the others are waiting for you to make yourself scarce so just the two of them can get back to it. Or, that they really just want a third party there for that extra excitement of voyeurism. But…that wasn't it, when I stopped, everything stopped, I got dressed and we went to bed."

"All together?" Mike asked.

"Yeah, that night, but after that," Toni shook her head, "I slept on the couch…David and Nick belonged, I didn't, even when David didn't bring someone home I knew, I really didn't belong there, I was only there because he was willing to take me in. He was a good guy, hardly had anything to his name but he'd help anybody he could."

"So why'd you leave?" Mike asked.

"I didn't like wearing out my welcome so I always left someone when the going was still good," Toni answered, "We all knew each other and we kind of traded off, one guy I was staying with would get me hooked up with another one, he'd introduce me to a girl he knew, I'd go home with her, trade off with a guy she knew, etc. It was a dizzying way of life but it was a way to survive."

* * *

"So let me ask you a question, Ricky," Munch said, "Why'd you keep this sketch of Toni?"

"She was my best model, and a good friend," he answered, "I haven't seen her in years so it was all I had to remember her by."

"Yes, I can see that," Munch said as he turned the picture towards him, "Pretty girl, isn't she?"

"I didn't sleep with her," Ricky insisted.

"Right, you've got a pretty naked girl at your fingertips to do anything with and you just stick to your oils," Munch said.

"I don't care if you believe me or not, it's true," he replied.

"Look, Ricky," Munch told him, "We're really _not_ here to bust your ass and give you a hard time, we're trying to help Toni. She's been fingered as a suspect in a string of rapes against young guys with red hair. Now if you know Toni as well as you say you do, maybe you can help us."

"How?" he asked.

"Did you ever see Toni completely naked?" Munch asked, "Does she have a mark of any kind on her breasts?"

He thought about it for a second and said, "Yeah she does."

"What is it?" Fin asked.

* * *

"Yeah, sure she had a mark on her," David told Elliot and Olivia, "Most of us got several of them, scars, burns, the works. The people who paid for us got to do whatever they wanted to us and what they wanted was to make us scream."

"This is something more specific, David," Olivia told him, "The victim who made the complaint against Toni said that she has a mark on her right breast, do you know anything about that?"

David didn't respond. He only looked straight ahead at them with a blank look on his face.

"It's alright, David," Olivia said, "We're trying to help Toni, we don't think she's guilty either, but it's a matter of proving it. And whatever you tell us can only help her case."

He didn't look convinced of that and said, "Toni said you were trying to strip search her to check for a mark, if I say she has one then you're going to arrest her."

"David, we have to know the truth," Olivia said, "It's the only way to help Toni."

David let out an exasperated huff and told them, "Yeah, she does."

"What is it?" Elliot asked.

"A small mole," he showed with his hand, "About two inches under her collarbone."

* * *

"It's a small dark freckle on the underside of her right breast," Ricky told Fin and Munch as he pushed back the napkin he'd sketched a quick diagram of Toni au natural on to demonstrate.

"How obvious is it to the human eye, say a few feet away in a dim room with her standing and you lying down?" Munch asked.

"It isn't," Ricky answered, "Look, there's no polite way to put this, Toni is busty, not perky, I take artistic license with her but you wouldn't see it unless she was lying on her back, which is why I always had her model for me laying on the couch or the bed."

"Meaning," Fin said to Munch, "Bierce couldn't have seen it the way he says he did."

"Toni didn't attack him, somebody put him up to it," Munch said, "He was just guessing that she did have a mark, an abused girl, it makes sense."

"The mark might not match with what he said, but they still have to take the pictures to check," Fin was starting to put the pieces together.

"Meaning Toni would _still_ have to be paraded around and humiliated, whoever's doing this is making it _very_ personal."

"Right, but who would do that?" Fin asked.

"I don't know," Munch replied, "You wouldn't think by now that Toni would have many enemies left."

Ricky looked confused, "What could Toni do that she'd have _any_ enemies? She never did anything to anyone."

Munch scoffed and said, "You really didn't know her too well did you?"

* * *

During the interview, Elliot and Olivia heard Cragen knocking on the outside of the mirror, so they told David to stay put and they left to find out what was going on.

"I don't know if we've got a problem or not, but it's not looking too promising either way," he told them.

"What's wrong, Captain?" Olivia asked.

Cragen pointed to the squad room and said, "Somebody must've put the word out about Toni to her old friends, we've got four more guys and three women who came in to speak on her behalf."

"I don't get it," Elliot said.

"I guess our friend Mr. Tompkins must've got in touch with his old neighbors, there's no other way they could've all come in this fast," Cragen told him.

"It still doesn't make any sense," Olivia replied, "We've heard Toni talk about her past, it doesn't sound very memorable and it certainly doesn't sound enjoyable, so why would all these people remember a girl who was practically comatose in bed?"

"I'll let you ask them that," Cragen answered, "I'm going to wrap up things with our friend in the next room and send him on his way for the night."


	10. Chapter 10

"Mr. Tompkins," Cragen said as he entered the interview room and addressed the young man pacing nervously around the table, "I'm going to be taking over this interview for Detectives Benson and Stabler."

"Where'd they go?" he asked suspiciously.

"It's a busy night, they've got other people to interview," he answered, "My name's Donald Cragen, I'm the captain here."

"Oh sure, Toni told me about you too, Alopecia," David said.

Cragen did a double take and replied, "Oh really?"

"She told me that you're a hardass who for the most part just tries to do the right thing," David said as he sat down at the table.

"For the most part?" Cragen asked.

"Yeah, she said that being a captain, you're a desk man now so you don't ever have to go out and talk to the victims or see what's been done to them, and it's probably been 10 years since you walked the beat with a partner like these other guys do. She says the good thing about being a desk man is that you get to order everybody else around to do all the dirty work, bad thing about it is when hell fires down from your superiors, _you're_ the one getting a bite taking out of your ass."

Cragen let that go and said only, "She's very opinionated."

"She's more than that," David said.

"Yeah, I'm sure she is," Cragen remarked, "I just need to clear up a couple of things…how old was Toni when she was staying with you?"

"16."

"How old were you?"

"19."

"And how old was your partner, Nick?"

"18."

Three strikes and he was out. There wasn't anything here that Cragen could use to charge anybody with anything.

"Can you think of anybody who would want to set Toni up for a rape?" he asked.

"No…look, I know we all got enemies, but I honestly don't recall anyone _ever_ being out to get her," David answered.

Cragen nodded and said, "Alright, you can go now. I want to thank you for coming in and trying to assist us."

David wasn't so easy to brush off, he glared at Cragen and said, "I know what you people think about people like _us_, you think we're a bunch of freaks and perverts who do it with anything with moves. Some of us were, some still are, but most of us are actually pretty normal…as normal as you can be when you've been bought, sold, traded, exploited and passed around like we all were. You go through a few years of that, you cope anyway that you know how, and when you're a kid you don't know a lot of ways to do that, and when you don't have any reliable adult figures in your life it doesn't help any. We've done the best that we can, most of us made it backwards from the edge of the cliff, but Toni?" he shook his head grimly, "She always could've gone either way, I don't know that it's any better now."

* * *

Explaining things to Kellerman had proved more exhausting than Toni would've thought, by the time she got through telling him everything she knew, they were both laying on top of the bed in his room and nearly asleep, but still she talked and she told him everything.

"You do what it takes in this world to survive," she said as she sat up and looked at him laying next to her, his eyes tired but open and focused on her, and she continued, "To survive, means different things to different people. To me it meant not freezing to death in the winter, not starving to death…to other people…to everybody else it just meant having somebody that they could touch and know that it was real. When you're on the streets, you have to be damn careful about who you let yourself get involved with. We all knew that. It's very easy to get mixed up with all the crazies, there's a ton of them out there and a lot of them seem very normal at first. If it's not street drugs, then it's psycho drugs, or it's not having the drugs, crazies are a dime a dozen and they all have different reasons for being."

"I can imagine," Mike said.

"It's hard _not_ to get involved with someone who's on _some_ type of drugs," Toni told him, "Everybody looking for a way out, even if it's just in their minds, something to numb them, dull them out, make them forget, or make them feel good, it's understandable, it's a hard temptation to resist."

"But you managed," he noted.

"_Somebody_ had to be the clear headed one of the bunch," she replied, "I drank, but not enough to lose it, not enough to forget…it didn't matter because there's not enough booze in the world to make me ever forget what happened, what those people did to me. I'd been used all my life from the time I was 10 years old, no matter how much you _want_ to forget that, you never do." She looked at him and said, "Don't misunderstand, most of the people I slept with after that point were alright, I liked them, I just didn't want to be there, I didn't like sleeping with them. I was just lucky none of the guys I ever shacked up with were meth heads, you know how that goes, they take the crystal meth and then they become a bunch of hophead Energizer bunnies, just keep going and going and going and going, hours on end without having to rest, I wouldn't have survived that. They were usually so gone by the time we were in bed that, before I blacked out, if they managed to make it one time they were doing well. Of course it's different with the women."

"Yeah I know what you mean there," Mike said.

"But I'll tell you something else, Mike," Toni said, "I never could understand _how_ anybody could sell themselves for a living…it's not that I'm so opposed to it, I just don't understand it, you take on so many clients a night, have to have sex with every single one of them, how do you stay in a mood for that long? Believe me, I've thought about it, and the idea of making some quick money isn't enough to keep the arousal going, I don't think _any_ body was meant to take all that punishment in one night, night after night for years on end like the ones that actually manage to stay alive do."

Kellerman shrugged and said, "I guess there's a lot to be said for faking it."

Toni snorted and said as she collapsed on the bed beside him, "You can't fake that much, no matter how well the job pays. But I guess it all depends on what the customer wants, if they want submissive, passive, etc. then it's probably easy to do it without any feelings towards the job at hand."

Kellerman propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her and said, "Alright, so let me ask you a question. Back at the hospital you mentioned that you don't lay around like a zombie anymore, so for you never having enjoyed anybody you were with, when was it you were supposed to have had this great sexual awakening?"

Toni laughed, but didn't get a chance to explain because a few seconds later the door opened as Fin and Munch came in.

"What did you do to Ricky?" Toni asked as she got up from the bed.

"Nothing, just sat him down for a friendly chat is all," Munch told her.

"John, we never slept together," Toni said.

"Yeah I know, he said the same thing, but I'm intrigued how with that in mind he could know that you _do_ have a mark on your breast…of course Da Vinci showed us his rough draft of you au natural. Toni you were 15 years old when you posed for him."

"I know math," Toni sniped, "I also know it well enough to know this is six years later so you couldn't do anything to him even if you wanted to."

"Law's changed over the years," Fin told her, "Five years ain't the magic number anymore."

"I don't want to," Munch told her, "I did at first but I believe him, and, I also believe that he's only here because you called him, to warn him about what was going on."

"Somebody had to do it," Toni replied, "And you weren't going to."

"We can't," Fin told her, "And you know that."

"But I can," she said, "I'm not a cop so I can tell anybody anything I want and that includes telling my old boyfriends to be careful. Trust me, the way these guys got around the block, that's going to set off a chain reaction. Has there been any word from Elliot or Olivia yet?"

"Nothing new," Munch shook his head, "I don't know what they're up to."

* * *

It had been an exhausting night and it showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. Elliot and Olivia were on their third interview for the night, this one was a blonde woman in her mid 20s named Kelsey Channing who made Elliot feel just a little sick to his stomach when he saw how much she reminded him of his daughter Kathleen if she were a few years older.

"Oh yeah, I remember Toni," she said with an almost dreamy look in he eyes, "Poor thing, she was so cute."

"How did you know her?" Olivia asked.

"We shared an apartment for a few weeks," she answered, "She moved in with me after she left Mike Gerritsen, and then she left me when she moved in with Allison Crane."

"You all knew each other?" Elliot asked.

"Oh sure, we were all friends," Kelsey explained, then she got a sheepish look on her face and said, "I know it sounds bad, but you had to be there, maybe you'd understand it then."

"How do you remember Toni?" Olivia asked.

"Well it's kind of hard not to," she answered, "Poor dear, always so miserable. I had…a bit of a drug problem back then, nothing hardcore mind you, just something to string out and try to forget…I always told her she ought to try it but she never would. She said that it was more important that she remembered all the crap she'd been through, than to try and forget it because she might forget something important along with it. I could never figure out why she'd want to remember, that always stuck with me, I guess you could say it haunted me knowing that there was someone out there who would _want_ to face the day sober, knowing what it would bring."

"But you're clean now?" Olivia asked.

"3 years, 8 months and 26 days," Kelsey nodded, "Toni always said the problem with her was if she took drugs to forget, eventually nothing would work on her anymore…and one day I realized it wasn't working on me anymore either…you'd never think you could get tired of it but eventually I guess I did."

"What were you trying to forget?" Elliot asked.

"My father," Kelsey laughed nervously, "I don't know if that makes it better or worse than what Toni went through because it wasn't with everybody who came in the door, but my father…" she shook her head, "What do you do? Well what I did was run away…and…Toni was always deep, philosophical, she was always asking did it make a person gay to just have sex with someone, or did it only count if you were in love with them? People think it's a choice…"

"And did Toni?"

Kelsey nodded, "Sort of…she always said that sometimes it was a choice to sleep with other girls…said if you think about it, it makes sense…guys don't have any clue what they're doing when it comes to women, so you'd want to be with someone who did…also, if you'd been repeatedly hurt by men, you might try women because they can't do it as much or aren't as likely too…simple reason is they aren't _as_ likely to penetrate you to make themselves feel good."

"And Toni?" Olivia asked.

Kelsey got an uncertain look on her face as she recalled, "Toni thought that it only counted if you loved the person you were sleeping with and if it mattered what sex they were…that said, she didn't love anybody."

"What about you?"

Kelsey fidgeted and said with a nervous giggle, "I liked her…maybe I loved her, but I was never sure, but I know she didn't love me, I was alright with that, I was used to guys doing it all the time. But like she said, I picked her because she was a girl and things were different, physically anyway."

A thought occurred to Olivia and she asked Kelsey, "When you and Toni were sleeping together, did she have any preferences? Did the lighting have to be a certain way or, did she stay covered up?"

"Oh yeah," Kelsey laughed as she recalled, "Poor Toni…see she had hit puberty early, and as if that ugly duckling stage isn't awkward enough, when she grew she shot up a few inches, and became a size larger, it wasn't anything she could help, that's just the size of her body frame, she wasn't meant to be a skinny person. But when you're a kid you don't know that kind of stuff, so she was very self conscious, you know the works; thought her butt was too big, thought her breasts should've been smaller, thought her legs were too fat, all that stuff. She was embarrassed to death when she got undressed, she'd always have the covers pulled up, wanted the lights down as low as possible, didn't want anyone to see her."

"Makes it hard to get intimate, doesn't it?" Elliot asked.

Kelsey laughed again and said, "Oh yeah…she'd just lay in bed and let you do pretty much whatever you wanted to her, within reason of course."

"What's within reason?" Olivia asked.

"It's hard to explain, as long as you didn't come off as being dominant then it wasn't too bad, but she thought most things were."

"And even when it was dark in the room, she never took advantage of that?" Olivia asked.

"No," Kelsey answered, "You could tell she really just didn't want to be there, and it never mattered who she was with, it was always the same."

"But you never let that stop you," Elliot noted.

Kelsey scowled at him and said, "I never get rough with anybody, and I don't do dominance…if you can't love then you don't survive, and we look for it any way we can find it, but mostly the only love we knew growing up was through sex. Toni shut everyone and everything out and wouldn't let anything get to her, I just tried to get through to her so she'd know it was alright. And when nothing worked, I stopped, shortly after that she moved out and in with someone else, but nothing changed. I always felt sorry for her."

* * *

"Have you found out anything yet?" Cragen asked when they exited the interview room.

"Yeah," Elliot answered, "I'm scared to death to let Dickie and Lizzie out of the house even more than I already was."

"Well everybody we talked to had similar stories about Toni," Olivia told Cragen, "But they don't quite match so I doubt anybody's putting them up to it."

"So what _did_ they say?" Cragen asked.

"Well their stories were all consistent, Toni was unresponsive during sex, never wanted anybody to see her, always had to have the lights down or out," Olivia said, "We called Huang down for his opinion."

"About what?" Cragen asked.

"Well the part about the lights matches with Bierce's story about his attack, but Toni would never let him see what she looked like, if she _was_ going to rape somebody then I think she would make sure they weren't going to wake up early and see her, or since they're already being sodomized, I think she would be behind them at all times so they'd never see her face _or_ her body," Elliot answered.

Huang came out of another interview room and pulled the door closed behind him.

"What do you make of it, doc?" Cragen asked.

"Based on what everybody had to say about Toni, she doesn't look good for these attacks," he said.

"David was right about something, rape is about power, and the men who resort to rape to get it are usually ones who feel otherwise powerless in their everyday lives, making somebody else as helpless as they feel is what boosts their own self esteem," Elliot said.

"This is true," Huang told him, "But Toni doesn't match that profile."

"Well why not?" Cragen asked, "She _was_ rendered powerless for several years of her life when she was being pimped out as a child. I'd think _anybody_ in that position would want to strike back."

Huang shook his head, "Not for Toni, to her, just getting away from the abuse was power enough, that was all she ever wanted. Based on the interviews I've conducted with her over the years, we know that Toni is not a malicious person by nature and only retaliates against people when they attack first. Her logic isn't distorted, she knows who is and isn't responsible, so she wouldn't be inflicting pain on every red haired male she comes across with the delusion that she's punishing them all for the actions of another person at another time and place. Several times during her years on the streets, Toni was put in a position to be dominant and take power over someone else when she was sleeping with them, and she never took it, she didn't want it, she doesn't equate power and sex as belonging together, they're oil and water to her."

"So how're we going to find out who the woman is that _is_ making that equation?" Olivia asked.

"I don't know but personally I don't feel too comfortable using this as evidence in our case even just by character witness testimony," Cragen told them, "We've had eight people come in to talk in Toni's defense, you know what any lawyer worth his weight in slime is going to do with that, they'll make her out to be a whore, she'll had no credibility upon entering the courtroom."

"Captain," Elliot started to say.

"The reasons why won't matter, nobody on that jury is going to understand the logic that went through these kids' heads when they were shacking up," Cragen told them.

"They might," Elliot replied, "Toni told me that one of the guys she used to sleep with is now a bailiff at the courthouse."

Huang took it upon himself to explain to Cragen, "Street kids don't always come from the streets and don't always stay there either, some of them do get out and go on to lead otherwise normal productive lives, you may be surprised just how many people in a courtroom would be able to relate with what they had to go through."

Elliot noticed Olivia looked like she had a pulsating migraine and he asked her, "You alright?"

Olivia nodded weakly and mumbled some response but she turned and stepped quickly down the hallway and into the ladies room. Elliot followed her in and saw her hovered over one of the sinks with the cold water running. She splashed some of it on her face and rinsed her mouth out.

"You okay, Liv?" he asked.

"I just feel sick," Olivia said as she shut the water off, "Remember what Toni said the night before she ran off?"

"Her telling Cragen to kiss her? Yeah I'll never forget that," Elliot commented.

"No, when Cragen told her that we don't get to pick the vic, she said the hell we don't, and she's right…she's a victim but we're treating her like a perp, everything we've done tonight has just been towards building a case against her."

"I don't like it either, Liv, but we've got to do everything we can to eliminate her as a suspect, that's the only way when this goes to trial the defense isn't going to eat us and her for breakfast, you know that," Elliot said.

"I still don't like it," Olivia told him, "I'm going to call Munch and see what he's found out."

* * *

Munch closed his phone and bit the inside of his cheeks as he turned around, and he asked Toni, "Is that friend of yours Ricky still here?"

"Should be," she answered, "Why?"

Munch turned to Fin and said, "I think we've been lied to, my friend, let's go pay Ricky another visit."

"What's going on?" Toni asked.

"You stay here," Munch told her, "I don't want either of you helping the other get their story straight, Mike, if you have to, sit on her, don't let her leave."

Mike grunted and said, "That's an unusual request, but alright."

Toni followed Munch toward the door screaming at him the entire time, and when they were gone she turned to Mike and asked him, "Is this what you guys always do to a perp? Totally leave him in the dark about what the hell's going on?"

Mike felt bad for her, he didn't believe for one minute that this woman attacked him, or anybody else and he said, "I'm sure they know what they're doing, Toni."

* * *

"You lied to us, Ricky," Munch said as he circled around the man.

"What about?"

"Why would Toni agree to pose naked for you, when it's common knowledge among those who knew her intimately that she hated being seen undressed?" Munch asked.

"To sleep with, sure," Ricky said.

"And how would you know that?"

"Trust me, word gets around," he answered, "Yeah, she was uncomfortable with it, but she was a good friend and helped me out. I never did any pictures of her totally nude, she was always covered, _and_ I pointed out to her that it was a sketch, not a snapshot, so anything she was uncomfortable with being seen, as an artist I could correct it. So long as the whole world and his brother wasn't seeing her with all the imperfections she thought she had, that made it easier for her too."

"So let me ask you a question," Munch said, "She did this to help you, what did she get in return?"

"I knew that she wouldn't stay long, and she'd need some help when she was off on her own again. So when I sold her pictures, I gave her a share of the money, it was only fair. Trust me, if she could get a job doing it professionally, she'd make a bundle."

"Well what makes her so special?" Fin asked.

"Most of the girls I knew were users, and you know what they look like? They snort all day and drink all night, but they never eat anything in between, just skin and bones, that's not an appealing look no matter how much they tried to sell heroin chic in the 90s. Toni gave me something to work with because hers was a fuller figure."

"Funny how she doesn't seem to agree with that opinion," Munch commented.

"She's just modest, always been that way," Ricky told him, "She appreciates a nice body when she sees it, she just doesn't see the same thing in the mirror."

"Did she ever talk to you about her sexual experiences?" Munch asked.

"A little, for us it was just small talk."

"She ever talk about anybody she particularly liked?"

Ricky shook his head, "She never liked anybody she slept with, for whatever reason, just couldn't enjoy herself." He held his hand up and said, "Anybody ever says she wanted it and is just trying to make trouble, they're lying. I happen to know that Toni's only idea of great sex is by herself."

"Well she's been trying to land my ex-partner for the last few days, so something must've happened to change that opinion," Munch told him, "The question is what?"

* * *

"The only reason they're talking to him," Toni told Mike, "Is because they think I did this."

"I don't think that's it, Toni," Mike tried to assure her.

"They're not talking to Ricky, or any of my other old flames to try and get insight about the woman who really assaulted you and those other guys, they're still trying to build a case for that guy Richard Bierce. You know what? I hope they _do_ arrest me for it, every defendant has a right to face their accuser in court and I want that, I want to see this guy and stare him dead in the eye before I strangle him."

Mike put his hand on Toni's shoulder and rubbed it comfortingly as he said, "Look Toni, I'll admit I don't know Munch's new partner Fin, and I haven't seen John for several years, but he seems to know you pretty well and I just don't believe that he'd think that about you."

"Then why is he doing this?" Toni asked, "Some wise guy comes up with a story and everybody focuses on that instead of the three _real_ victims there are in this case. I don't get it, Mike, what the hell is going on?"

Mike grabbed her and pulled her towards him and before she could do anything, he kissed her. She pulled back from him and asked, "What did you do that for?"

"Remember what you said last night about needing someone?" he asked, "Well, I'm here now…at least you know you always got _one_ person on your side, sometimes that's enough…is it here?"

Toni looked him in the eyes and her visible emotions gave away nothing, but she wrapped her arms around him and said, "It's enough for now."

"That's all I needed to know," Mike replied as he pulled her close to him again, "Don't worry, Toni, they're not going to let anything happen to you, and I'm going to personally see to it."

"I just wish we could find the bitch responsible for this whole thing and get it over with," Toni sighed.

"Me too," Mike said as he thought back to the night in question, his foggy memory starting to become a little clearer now as he started to recall his attack.


End file.
